Approximate Communication for Energy Efficient Wireline Links

节能有线链路的近似通信

• 批准号: 2003015
• 负责人: Tejasvi Anand
• 金额: $ 40万
• 依托单位: Oregon State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-09-01 至 2024-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2003015&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Approximate; Communication; Energy; Efficient; Wireline

The goal of this project is to reduce the cost of a wireline communication system by improving its energy efficiency. In pursuing this goal, the project will investigate mechanisms to trade the accuracy of communication data bits with the energy efficiency of wireline links and analyze how to do this trade-off dynamically. The research is motivated by the fact that emerging data applications such as recognition, mining, search, data analytics, and machine learning are naturally resilient and can still produce correct output in the presence of erroneous data. The concept of approximate computing has leveraged this very resilient nature of data applications to improve the efficiency of computing. This project will leverage the same resilient nature to improve the energy efficiency of wireline data links by doing approximate communication. The results of this research will open a new dimension for improving energy efficiency by trading communication data-bit accuracy with energy efficiency. The research outcomes will give software developers a control knob with which energy-aware applications can be developed. The success of this research will motivate computer architects and compiler writers to provide energy-accuracy trade-off features to software developers with the aim of realizing an energy-efficient computing platform running energy-aware applications. This project will investigate control knobs and optimal parameters to achieve desired bit-error-rate (BER) with minimum energy per bit. Reconfigurable transceiver architectures investigated as part of this research will help support dynamic accuracy requirements of the data applications. This project will also investigate energy-scalable universal transmitter architectures, with the ability to support different pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) formats (PAM-4/8/16/32), different pulse width modulation (PWM) formats (PWM-4/8/16), and equalization methods on these modulations will be investigated. Furthermore, time-domain processing circuits at the receivers will be investigated, which can effectively trade-off energy consumption with accuracy. The approach of this project is unique because it focuses on improving energy efficiency through accuracy-energy trade-off, while other existing approaches focus on improving the efficiency of individual wireline circuits for a fixed accuracy. Energy-scalable techniques and architectures invented as part of this research can also be used to achieve approximate optical communication.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该项目的目标是通过提高能源效率来降低有线通信系统的成本。在追求这一目标的过程中，该项目将研究通信数据比特的准确性与有线链路的能源效率之间的交易机制，并分析如何动态地进行这种权衡。这项研究的动机是这样一个事实，即新兴的数据应用程序，如识别，挖掘，搜索，数据分析和机器学习，具有天然的弹性，并且在存在错误数据的情况下仍然可以产生正确的输出。近似计算的概念利用了数据应用程序的这种非常有弹性的特性来提高计算效率。该项目将利用相同的弹性性质，通过近似通信来提高有线数据链路的能源效率。这项研究的结果将为提高能源效率开辟一个新的层面，通过交易通信数据位的准确性与能源效率。研究成果将为软件开发人员提供一个控制旋钮，可以开发能源感知应用程序。这项研究的成功将激励计算机架构师和编译器的作家，以实现一个节能的计算平台运行的能源意识的应用程序的目的，为软件开发人员提供能源准确性权衡功能。本计画将探讨控制旋钮与最佳参数，以达到所需的位元错误率（BER）与最小的每位元能量。作为本研究的一部分，可重新配置的收发器架构的调查将有助于支持数据应用的动态精度要求。该项目还将研究能量可扩展的通用发射机架构，能够支持不同的脉冲幅度调制（PAM）格式（PAM-4/8/16/32），不同的脉冲宽度调制（PWM）格式（PWM-4/8/16），并将研究这些调制的均衡方法。此外，时域处理电路在接收器，它可以有效地权衡能量消耗与精度将被调查。该项目的方法是独特的，因为它侧重于通过精度-能量权衡来提高能量效率，而其他现有方法则侧重于提高单个有线电路的效率以获得固定的精度。作为这项研究的一部分，发明的能量可伸缩技术和架构也可用于实现近似光通信。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

项目成果

A 27 Gb/s 5.39 pJ/bit 8-ary Modulated Wireline Transceiver Using Pulse Width and Amplitude Modulation Achieving 9.5 dB SNR Improvement over PAM-8

使用脉冲宽度和幅度调制的 27 Gb/s 5.39 pJ/bit 8 进制调制有线收发器，与 PAM-8 相比，SNR 提高了 9.5 dB

• DOI: 10.23919/vlsicircuits52068.2021.9492426
• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: Symposium on VLSI Circuits
• 作者: Megahed, M;Chun, Y;Wang, Z;and Anand, T
• 通讯作者: and Anand, T