A Genetic-algorithm-based Approach to the Design of DCT Hardware Accelerators
Bibliographic record
Abstract
As modern applications demand an unprecedented level of computational resources, traditional computing system design paradigms are no longer adequate to guarantee significant performance enhancement at an affordable cost. Approximate Computing (AxC) has been introduced as a potential candidate to achieve better computational performances by relaxing non-critical functional system specifications. In this article, we propose a systematic and high-abstraction-level approach allowing the automatic generation of near Pareto-optimal approximate configurations for a Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) hardware accelerator. We obtain the approximate variants by using approximate operations, having configurable approximation degree, rather than full-precise ones. We use a genetic searching algorithm to find the appropriate tuning of the approximation degree, leading to optimal tradeoffs between accuracy and gains. Finally, to evaluate the actual HW gains, we synthesize non-dominated approximate DCT variants for two different target technologies, namely, Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs). Experimental results show that the proposed approach allows performing a meaningful exploration of the design space to find the best tradeoffs in a reasonable time. Indeed, compared to the state-of-the-art work on approximate DCT, the proposed approach allows an 18% average energy improvement while providing at the same time image quality improvement.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".