Increasing adder efficiency by exploiting input statistics

Current techniques for characterizing the power consumption of adders rely on assuming that the inputs are completely random. However, the inputs generated by realistic applications are not random, and in fact include a great deal of structure. Input bits are more likely to remain in the same logical states from addition to addition than would be expected by chance and bits, especially the most significant bits, are very likely to be in the same state as their neighbors. Taking this data, I look at ways that it can be used to improve the design of adders. The first method I look at involves looking at how different adder architectures respond to the different characteristics of input data from the more significant and less significant bits of the adder, and trying to use these responses to create a hybrid adder. Unfortunately the differences are not sufficient for this approach to be effective. I next look at the implications of the data I collected for the optimization of Kogge- Stone adder trees, and find that in certain circumstances the use of experimentally derived activity maps rather than ones based on simple assumptions can increase adder performance by as much as 30%.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Clough, Andrew Lawrence

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Vladimir Stojanovic.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/42424

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/42424