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A low power error detection technique for floating-point units in embedded applications

Shekarian, M. H ; Sharif University of Technology | 2008

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  1. Type of Document: Article
  2. DOI: 10.1109/EUC.2008.108
  3. Publisher: 2008
  4. Abstract:
  5. Reliability and low power consumption are two major design objectives in today's embedded systems. Since floating-point units (FPU) are required for some embedded applications (e.g., multimedia applications), careful considerations should be given to the reliability and power consumptions of FPUs used in embedded systems. When using existing fault handling mechanisms for FPUs, it has been observed that the division operation imposes a considerable hardware overhead as compared to the addition, subtraction, and multiplication operations. Although the division operation is less frequently used, in reliable applications it is a must that all the components operate properly. In this paper, we present a low power error detection mechanism for the division operation in FPUs. In this technique the FPU multiplier circuitry is modified so that it can be used to detect the errors that may happen in the divider circuitry. The experimental results show that while the proposed technique can detect almost all the errors in the division circuitry, its power-delay-product (PDP) is about 23% lower than that of the traditional error detection techniques. © 2008 IEEE
  6. Keywords:
  7. Error detection technique ; Floating-point division ; Floating-point multiplication ; IEEE standard floating-point numbers ; Power-delay-product ; Applications ; Electric power utilization ; Embedded systems ; Flip flop circuits ; Fluidized bed combustion ; Hand held computers ; Integrated circuits ; Multimedia systems ; Ubiquitous computing ; Error detection
  8. Source: 5th International Conference on Embedded and Ubiquitous Computing, EUC 2008, Shanghai, 17 December 2008 through 20 December 2008 ; Volume 1 , January , 2008 , Pages 199-205 ; 9780769534923 (ISBN)
  9. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4756339