On Evolutionary Approximation of Logic Circuits

The concept of approximation has intensively been studied, developed and applied not only in computer science, but also in mathematics and engineering disciplines. The never ending requirement for low power consumption led to making approximate circuits and computer systems even in the areas in which only accurately working solutions have traditionally been accepted. Approximate circuits are the circuits relaxing the requirement on the functional equivalence between the specification and implementation in order to reduce the area on a chip, delay or energy consumption. Approximate computing machines further exploit and apply this idea at all system levels. This paper introduces the field of approximate computing and shows how evolutionary design methods can automate the design process of approximate computing systems, in particular, approximate logic circuits.