Using probability to halve chip power use
Using probability to halve chip power use
By Green Channel Staff | Mar 25, 2011
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Researchers have improved energy efficiency in chips with the alarming-sounding approach of cutting back on accuracy.
The “good-enough” chips use a probability methodology to halve energy consumption and double performance that can be used for data centers, networking and smaller devices, the Cleantech blog reports.
A team of international researchers has found that with error rate of 8% they can cut energy consumption in half and double performance, while using a smaller chip, Rice University has announced.
The technique called “probabilistic pruning,” involves excising parts of a circuit that are rarely used.
“Instead of performing every calculation to its exact decimal point, are allowed to make mistakes,” Cleantech says.
The new technique was unveiled this week at DATE11, a European microelectronics conference.
