Posits and the state of numerical representations in the age of exascale and edge computing
Posits and the state of numerical representations in the age of exascale and edge computing
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DOI：
10.1002/spe.3022
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发表时间：
2021-09
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Alexandra Poulos;S. Mckee;J. C. Calhoun
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文献类型：
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作者：
Alexandra Poulos;S. Mckee;J. C. Calhoun
对内存利用率、功耗和I/O吞吐量的日益增长的约束已日益成为高性能计算(HPC)和边缘计算应用发展的限制因素。几十年来，IEEE-754浮点类型一直是浮点数系统的事实标准，但这种数值表示法的缺点还有待改进。在高性能计算和机器学习环境中，替代表示法正获得越来越多的支持。最近，有人提议将POSITS作为IEEE-754浮点表示的替代。我们综述了POSITS在边缘计算和高性能计算中的开发和使用的最新和最先进的实践。目前的文献支持POSITS作为传统浮点系统的一种有前途的替代方案，无论是作为独立的替代还是在混合精度环境中。命题类型的开发和标准化正在进行中，许多研究仍有待探索命题在不同领域的应用，如何最好地在硬件中实现它们，以及它们在哪里适合其他数值表示法。
Growing constraints on memory utilization, power consumption, and I/O throughput have increasingly become limiting factors to the advancement of high performance computing (HPC) and edge computing applications. IEEE‐754 floating‐point types have been the de facto standard for floating‐point number systems for decades, but the drawbacks of this numerical representation leave much to be desired. Alternative representations are gaining traction, both in HPC and machine learning environments. Posits have recently been proposed as a drop‐in replacement for the IEEE‐754 floating‐point representation. We survey the state‐of‐the‐art and state‐of‐the‐practice in the development and use of posits in edge computing and HPC. The current literature supports posits as a promising alternative to traditional floating‐point systems, both as a stand‐alone replacement and in a mixed‐precision environment. Development and standardization of the posit type is ongoing, and much research remains to explore the application of posits in different domains, how to best implement them in hardware, and where they fit with other numerical representations.