Predictability: definition, analysis and optimization [VLSI design]

Predictability is the quantified form of accuracy. We propose a predictability driven design methodology. The novelty lies in defining and using the idea of predictability. In order to illustrate the basic concepts we focus on the low power binding problem. The binding problem for low power was solved in (A. Raghunathan et al, Procs of IEEE Symp. on Ccts. and Systems, 1995), (J.M. Chang et al, Proc. Design Automation Conference, pp. 29-35, 1995), but in the presence of inaccuracies, their claims of optimality are imprecise. Our experiments show that these inaccuracies could be as high as 33%. Our methodology could improve this unpredictability to as low as 11% with minimal power penalty (7% on average).