Analysis and Redesign of Digital Circuits to Support Green Computing Through Approximation

Abstract

The massive power consumption by several computing devices places a heavy burden on the power grid. Beginning from the production of these devices to its disposal, it poses several disadvantages to the environment. Green Computing refers to the research and development of computing devices that do not pose any adverse impact on the environment. This paper is a contribution to the analysis of digital circuits and proposes a technique to redesign it with intent to support green computing. We use a gate-level netlist to carry out the study. The objective is to remove components (in terms of gates) from the primary circuit and propose a new modified circuit that consumes less power as well as area. In the electronic industry, these modified circuits are referred to as approximate circuits. The only problem with this kind of circuit is it does not produce an actual result; rather, it produces an approximate result (also known as a good-enough result). Because of the error-resilient property of several applications, these approximate results are quite useful. We propose the methodology to redesign the circuit and propose a case study by taking ISCAS’85 benchmark circuit to prove our methodology. The experimental result shows that we can reduce energy consumption by 25–40% with our proposed technique.