An Instruction-Level Quality-Aware Method for Exploiting STT-RAM Read Approximation Techniques
Mohammad Taghi Teimoori, Alireza Ejlali · IEEE Embedded Systems Letters · 2017
Although the read disturb spin-transfer torque RAM approximation technique improves performance, it may consist of an approximate read plus an approximate write both at the same time. So it may degrade the application quality of result (QoR) considerably. On the other hand, the incorrect read decision approximation technique improves power without corrupting the stored data. We adopt an opportunity study for instruction-based distinction of read implementation to take advantage of both of the approximation techniques, while enhancing application's QoR. We evaluated the proposed method using a set of state-of-the-art benchmarks. The experimental results show that our method allows to increase application's QoR substantially (i.e., by up to about 24 dB) compared to QoR-oblivious use of the read approximation techniques.