Approximate Full Adders for Energy Efficient Image Processing Applications

Abstract

This paper proposes six novel approximate 1-bit full adders (AFAs) for inexact computing. The six novel AFAs namely AFA1, AFA2, AFA3, AFA4, AFA5, and AFA6 are derived from state-of-the-art exact 1-bit full adder (EFA) architectures. The performance of these AFAs is compared with reported AFAs (RAAs) in terms of design metrics (DMs) and peak-signal-to-noise-ratio (PSNR). The DMs under consideration are power, delay, power-delay-product (PDP), energy-delay-product (EDP), and area. For a fair comparison, the EFAs and proposed AFAs along with RAAs are described in Verilog, simulated, and synthesized using Cadences’ RC tool, using generic 180 nm standard cell library. The unconstrained synthesis results show that: among all the proposed AFAs, the AFA1 and AFA2 are found to be energy-efficient adders with high PSNR. The AFA1 has a total [Formula: see text][Formula: see text][Formula: see text]W, [Formula: see text][Formula: see text]ps, [Formula: see text][Formula: see text]fJ, [Formula: see text][Formula: see text]Js, [Formula: see text][Formula: see text][Formula: see text]m2, and [Formula: see text][Formula: see text]dB. And the AFA2 has the total [Formula: see text][Formula: see text][Formula: see text]W, [Formula: see text][Formula: see text]ps, [Formula: see text][Formula: see text]fJ, [Formula: see text][Formula: see text]Js, [Formula: see text][Formula: see text][Formula: see text]m2, and [Formula: see text][Formula: see text]dB.