A simple yet efficient accuracy configurable adder design

Abstract

Approximate computing is a promising approach for low power IC design and has recently received considerable research attention. To accommodate dynamic levels of approximation, a few accuracy configurable adder designs have been developed in the past. However, these designs tend to incur large area overheads as they rely on either redundant computing or complicated carry prediction. Some of these designs include error detection and correction circuitry, which further increases area. In this work, we investigate a simple accuracy configurable adder design that contains no redundancy or error detection/correction circuitry and uses very simple carry prediction. Simulation results show that our design dominates the latest previous work on accuracy-delay-power tradeoff while using 39% lower area. Moreover, we propose a delay-adaptive self-configuration technique to further improve accuracy-delay-power tradeoff.