This article presents a novel approximate adder that is design-optimized and has optimized error metrics. Optimization in design translates into optimization of the design parameters such as delay, power, and area/resources, and optimization of the error metrics points to the usefulness of the proposed approximate adder for practical applications. We refer to the proposed approximate adder that is hardware optimized and having a near-normal error distribution as HOAANED, in short. We consider the implementation of HOAANED and the other approximate adders based on ASIC and FPGA design environments. We used a Xilinx Artix-7 device for a FPGA implementation, and a 32/28-nm CMOS standard digital cell library for an ASIC based implementation. To demonstrate the practical utility of HOAANED, we considered digital image processing as a practical application and performed experimentation with many images. The quality of the images reconstructed using the approximate adders was analyzed based on the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), which is used as a qualitative figure-of-merit to assess the images. It is found that HOAANED achieves an improved PSNR in comparison with the other approximate adders for image processing, and this is achieved with HOAANED simultaneously featuring optimized design metrics and error characteristics.

This paper presents a new hardware optimized and error reduced approximate adder (HOERAA), which is suitable for field programmable gate array (FPGA)- and application specific integrated circuit (ASIC)-based implementations. In this work, we consider a FPGA-based implementation using Xilinx Vivado 2018.3, targeting an Artix-7 FPGA. The ASIC-based realizations are based on a 32/28nm complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process. Based on FPGA implementations, we note the following: (i) For 32-bit addition involving a 8-bit least significant inaccurate sub-adder, HOERAA requires 22% fewer look-up tables (LUTs) and 18.6% fewer registers while reducing the minimum clock period by 7.1% and reducing the power-delay product (PDP) by 14.7%, compared to the native accurate FPGA adder, and (ii) for 64-bit addition involving a 8-bit least significant inaccurate sub-adder, HOERAA requires 11% fewer LUTs and 9.3% fewer registers while reducing the minimum clock period by 8.3% and reducing the PDP by 9.3%, compared to the native accurate FPGA adder. Based on ASIC-style implementations, HOERAA is found to achieve the following reductions in design metrics compared to an optimum accurate carry-lookahead adder: (i) A 15.7% reduction in critical path delay, a 21.4% reduction in area, and a 35% reduction in PDP for 32-bit addition involving a 8-bit least significant inaccurate sub-adder, and (ii) a 15.3% reduction in critical path delay, a 10.7% reduction in area, and a 20% reduction in PDP for 64-bit addition involving a 8-bit least significant inaccurate sub-adder. Moreover, comparisons with other approximate adders show that HOERAA has a significantly reduced average error, mean average error, and root mean square error, while reporting near optimum design metrics.

Addition is a fundamental operation in microprocessing and digital signal processing hardware, which is physically realized using an adder. The carry-lookahead adder (CLA) and the carry-select adder (CSLA) are two popular high-speed, low-power adder architectures. The speed performance of a CLA architecture can be improved by adopting a hybrid CLA architecture which employs a small-size ripple-carry adder (RCA) to replace a sub-CLA in the least significant bit positions. On the other hand, the power dissipation of a CSLA employing full adders and 2:1 multiplexers can be reduced by utilizing binary-to-excess-1 code (BEC) converters. In the literature, the designs of many CLAs and CSLAs were described separately. It would be useful to have a direct comparison of their performances based on the design metrics. Hence, we implemented homogeneous and hybrid CLAs, and CSLAs with and without the BEC converters by considering 32-bit accurate and approximate additions to facilitate a comparison. For the gate-level implementations, we considered a 32/28 nm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) process targeting a typical-case process–voltage–temperature (PVT) specification. The results show that the hybrid CLA/RCA architecture is preferable among the CLA and CSLA architectures from the speed and power perspectives to perform accurate and approximate additions.

This article presents a biased implementation style weak-indication self-timed full adder design that is latency optimized. The proposed full adder is constructed using the delay-insensitive dual-rail code and adheres to the 4-phase handshaking. Performance comparisons of the proposed full adder vis-à-vis other strong and weak-indication full adders are done on the basis of a 32-bit self-timed ripple carry adder architecture, with the full adders and ripple carry adders realized using a 32/28nm CMOS process. The results show that the proposed full adder leads to reduction in latency by 63.3% against the best of the strong-indication full adders whilst reporting decrease in area by 10.6% and featuring comparable power dissipation. On the other hand, when compared with the existing optimized weak-indication full adder, the proposed full adder is found to minimize the latency by 25.1% whilst causing an increase in area by just 1.6%, however, with no associated power penalty.

The carry look-ahead adder (CLA) is well known among the family of high-speed adders. However, a conventional CLA is not faster than other high-speed adders such as a conditional sum adder (CSA), a carry-select adder (CSLA), and the Kogge–Stone adder (KSA), which is the fastest parallel-prefix adder. Further, in terms of power-delay product (PDP) that characterizes the energy of digital circuits, the conventional CLA is not efficient compared to CSLA and KSA. In this context, this paper presents a high-speed and energy-efficient architecture for the CLA. Many adders ranging from ripple carry to parallel-prefix adders were implemented using a 32-28 nm CMOS standard digital cell library by considering a 32-bit addition. The adders were structurally described in Verilog and synthesized using Synopsys Design Compiler. From the results obtained, it is observed that the proposed CLA achieves a reduction in critical path delay by 55.3% and a reduction in PDP by 45% compared to the conventional CLA. Compared to the CSA, the proposed CLA achieves a reduction in critical path delay by 33.9%, a reduction in power by 26.1%, and a reduction in PDP by 51.1%. Compared to an optimized CSLA, the proposed CLA achieves a reduction in power by 35.4%, a reduction in area by 37.3%, and a reduction in PDP by 37.1% without sacrificing the speed. Although the KSA is faster, the proposed CLA achieves a reduction in power by 39.6%, a reduction in PDP by 6.5%, and a reduction in area by 55.6% in comparison.

This paper presents a new approximate adder architecture which when implemented on an FPGA consumes fewer logic resources compared to accurate adders of similar size and can achieve higher or comparable operating frequencies. For 32-bit addition, our approximate adder achieves a 25% reduction in the number of LUTs utilized compared to the accurate adder with no compromise on the speed performance. For 64-bit addition, our approximate adder achieves a 24% improvement in the maximum operating frequency, and a 25% reduction in the number of LUTs utilized compared to the accurate adder (post place and route on a Virtex-7 FPGA device). We also make comparisons with the FPGA-based implementations of some well-known gate-level approximate adders, and further provide insights into the error characteristics showing that the proposed approximate adder has a reduced error range.