Blog: The Surprising Usefulness of Sloppy Arithmetic

The Surprising Usefulness of Sloppy Arithmetic
MIT News (01/03/11) Larry Hardesty

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have developed a computer chip that can perform thousands of calculations simultaneously using imprecise arithmetic circuits. MIT visiting professor Joseph Bates and graduate student George Shaw started by assessing an algorithm used for object-recognition systems that distinguishes foreground and background components in video frames. The researchers rewrote the algorithm so that the results were either raised or lowered by less than 1 percent. The researchers say the chip design works especially well for image and video processing applications. Currently, computer chips have four or eight cores, but the MIT chip has 1,000 smaller cores that do not produce precise results. The MIT chip also is 1,000 times more efficient than conventional chips because each core only communicates with its immediate neighbors. The researchers say the chip will be good at solving common computer science problems, such as the near-neighbor search, and computer analysis of protein folding. Intel's Bob Colwell says the chip's most promising application could be with human-computer interactions.

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