FPCAM: Floating Point Configurable Approximate Multiplier for Error Resilient Applications

In this paper, we propose the design of a power-efficient floating point configurable approximate multiplier (FPCAM) suitable for error resilient applications. FPCAM allows systematic approximation, and the amount of approximation can be configured at run-time, depending on the error-tolerance of the applications. We show that compared to the existing state of the art multipliers, FPCAM on average consumes 62% lesser power and has 69% less power delay product. FPCAM also has 66% less area as compared to state of the art approximate multipliers. We have analyzed FPCAM for three different multimedia applications and random inputs to show that we achieve similar output quality as compared to existing multipliers while benefiting in power, area, and power delay product.