Design of an Approximate Multiplier with Time and Power Efficient Approximation Methods

Approximate multipliers have gradually become a focus of research due to the emergence of fault-tolerant applications. This paper deals with the approximation methods for an approximation multiplier with truncation, probability transformation and a majority gate-based compressor chain. With the help of probability analysis, the proposed approximation methods are utilized in an approximate 8 x 8 unsigned multiplier to achieve low accuracy loss, high efficiency for time and power. Compared with the precise and approximate multipliers, the proposed design brings 55.0%, 39.0% reduction in delay and 73.8%, 22.6% power saving. The proposed multiplier achieves better peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) values when evaluated with an image processing application.