TAAC: Task Allocation Meets Approximate Computing for Internet of Things

Ultra-low-power operation, as required by Internet of Things (IoT) systems, requires to address energy consumption at all levels from circuit to system. Two of the promising solutions at circuit and system levels are approximate computing and energy aware task allocation, respectively. However, the existing task allocation approaches are designed without considering the aspect of approximate computing. For the first time, this work proposes an optimal Task Allocation algorithm taking the Approximate Computing into account (TAAC) to fill this gap. The problem of tasks assignment and executing modes selection (approximate or exact modes of the tasks) can be efficiently solved by formulating it as a linear programming problem. The extensive simulation results show that the proposed TAAC algorithm significantly outperforms the previous approaches.