TY - GEN
T1 - Scalable stochastic processors
AU - Narayanan, Sriram
AU - Sartori, John
AU - Kumar, Rakesh
AU - Jones, Douglas L.
PY - 2010
Y1 - 2010
N2 - Future microprocessors increasingly rely on an unreliable CMOS fabric due to aggressive scaling of voltage and frequency, and shrinking design margins. Fortunately, many emerging applications can tolerate computational errors caused by hardware unreliabilities, at least during certain execution intervals. In this paper, we propose scalable stochastic processors, a computing platform for error-tolerant applications that is able to scale gracefully according to performance demands and power constraints while producing outputs that are, in the worst case, stochastically correct. Scalability is achieved by exposing to the application layer multiple functional units that differ in their architecture but share functionality. A mobile video encoding application here is able to achieve the lowest power consumption at any bitrate demand by dynamically switching between functional-unit architectures.
AB - Future microprocessors increasingly rely on an unreliable CMOS fabric due to aggressive scaling of voltage and frequency, and shrinking design margins. Fortunately, many emerging applications can tolerate computational errors caused by hardware unreliabilities, at least during certain execution intervals. In this paper, we propose scalable stochastic processors, a computing platform for error-tolerant applications that is able to scale gracefully according to performance demands and power constraints while producing outputs that are, in the worst case, stochastically correct. Scalability is achieved by exposing to the application layer multiple functional units that differ in their architecture but share functionality. A mobile video encoding application here is able to achieve the lowest power consumption at any bitrate demand by dynamically switching between functional-unit architectures.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=77953119273&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1109/date.2010.5457181
DO - 10.1109/date.2010.5457181
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:77953119273
SN - 9783981080162
T3 - Proceedings -Design, Automation and Test in Europe, DATE
SP - 335
EP - 338
BT - DATE 10 - Design, Automation and Test in Europe
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference and Exhibition, DATE 2010
Y2 - 8 March 2010 through 12 March 2010
ER -