Advancing synthesis of decision tree-based multiple classifier systems: an approximate computing case study

Abstract

So far, multiple classifier systems have been increasingly designed to take advantage of hardware features, such as high parallelism and computational power. Indeed, compared to software implementations, hardware accelerators guarantee higher throughput and lower latency. Although the combination of multiple classifiers leads to high classification accuracy, the required area overhead makes the design of a hardware accelerator unfeasible, hindering the adoption of commercial configurable devices. For this reason, in this paper, we exploit approximate computing design paradigm to trade hardware area overhead off for classification accuracy. In particular, starting from trained DT models and employing precision-scaling technique, we explore approximate decision tree variants by means of multiple objective optimization problem, demonstrating a significant performance improvement targeting field-programmable gate array devices.