ΑΝΑΚΟΙΝΩΣΗ

Την Πέμπτη , 16 Μαΐου, στις 10:00-12:00 την ώρα του μαθήματος του ΠΜΣ Ηλεκτρονικής Φυσικής «Ψηφιακά Συστήματα» στην αίθουσα διδασκαλίας 213 (γυάλινο κτίριο) θα δοθεί διάλεξη από τον καθηγητή του Πανεπιστημίου της Βρέμης, Alberto Garcia-Ortiz με τίτλο

«Approximate and stochatic computing: exploiting the energy-accuracy trade-off»

Abstract

As technology scales the variability of devices and interconnects increases dramatically due to intrinsic (e.g., unequal dopant
concentrations) and extrinsic (e.g.~temperature variations) factors. Furthermore, current devices degrade over time — the so called aging — which further exacerbates the variability problem.

To address this problems, a new vision called «imprecise computing» has begun to emerge with a radically new view: it advocates to expose and exploit the error characteristics of a system during the design flow. By matching the statistical error attributes of the hardware with the statistical processing requirements of a target application, a tremendous gain of energy-efficiency and/or performance can be achieved. Examples where this approach has been successfully applied are DCT/IDCT transformation, motion estimation, or CORDIC architecture, that among others reach 30% to 69% energy-savings.

The «imprecise» functionality appears in two fundamentally different
flavors: either it is due to the unavoidable variability of the technology which is addressed with additional logic –the so called stochastic computing– or it is created by design to reduce the area or energy consumption of the system –the so called approximate computing.

In this lecture we will discuss in detail the key motivation and the different approaches for imprecise computing, including approximate and stochastic techniques, and covering different levels of abstraction.

Short CV

Alberto Garcia-Ortiz received the Diploma degree in telecommunication systems from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, in 1998, and the Ph.D. degree (summa cum laude) with the Institute of Microelectronic Systems, Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany, in 2003. He was with Newlogic, Austria, for two years. From 2003 to 2005, he was a Senior Hardware Design Engineer with IBM Deutschland Research and Development, in Böblingen. After that, he joined start-up AnaFocus, Spain, where he was responsible for the design and integration of AnaFocus’ next generation Vision Systems-on-Chip. He is currently a Full Professor for the Chair of Integrated Digital Systems, University of Bremen.

Prof. Garcia-Ortiz received the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the European Design and Automation Association in 2004. In 2005, he received an innovation award from IBM for contributions to leakage estimation. Two patents are issued with that work. He serves as an Editor for JOLPE and is a reviewer of several conferences, journals, and European projects.