A Review of Deterministic Approaches to Stochastic Computing
A Review of Deterministic Approaches to Stochastic Computing
复制标题
随机计算的确定性方法回顾
DOI：
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发表时间：
2021
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Yongqiang Zhang
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Zhendong Lin;Guangjun Xie;Shaowei Wang;Jie Han;Yongqiang Zhang
随机计算 (SC) 已成为具有加权二进制表示的传统计算的替代方案。 SC中的操作可以通过简单的逻辑门来执行，从而显着降低硬件复杂性。随机数生成器生成的随机比特流被用作 SC 中的计算介质。然而，由于比特流固有的随机波动，SC 中的传统操作是不准确的。为了解决这个问题，已经提出了使用比特流的相对素流长度、旋转和时钟划分的确定性方法，以实现完全精确的计算。然而，这些方法需要更长的比特流，导致更长的计算延迟，从而导致更大的能耗。例如，如果使用确定性方法将两个具有 n 位精度的数字相乘，则比特流长度 (BSL) 约为 22n。旨在降低延迟和能耗的研究可分为串行和并行设计两类，分别减少 BSL 和并行化比特流。本文回顾了这些 SC 的确定性方法和相关设计，并讨论了它们的优点和缺点，以便在未来的工作中进行可能的改进。
Stochastic computing (SC) has emerged as an alternative to conventional computing with weighted binary representation. The operations in SC can be performed through simple logic gates to significantly reduce hardware complexity. The random bitstreams generated by stochastic number generators are exploited as the computing medium in SC. However, traditional operations in SC are inaccurate because of the inherent random fluctuations in bitstreams. To resolve this issue, deterministic approaches using the relatively prime stream length, rotation, and clock division of bitstreams, have been proposed for completely accurate computing. However, these approaches require much longer bitstreams, resulting in a longer computing latency and thus a larger energy consumption. For example, the bitstream length (BSL) is approximately 22n if two numbers with n-bit precision are multiplied using a deterministic approach. The studies aimed at lowering the latency and energy can be divided into two categories of serial and parallel designs to, respectively, reduce the BSL and parallelize bitstreams. These deterministic approaches to SC and the associated designs are reviewed in this paper with discussions of their strengths and weaknesses for possible improvements in future work.