Towards a sound approximating compiler for numerical kernels (keynote)
Eva Darulová · 2020
Computing resources are fundamentally limited and sometimes an exact solution may not even exist. Thus, when implementing real-world systems, approximations are inevitable, as are the errors they introduce. The magnitude of errors is problem-dependent but higher accuracy generally comes at a cost in terms of memory, energy or runtime, effectively creating an accuracy-efficiency tradeoff. To take advantage of this tradeoff, we need to ensure that the computed results are sufficiently accurate, otherwise we risk disastrously incorrect results or system failures.