Increasing the Energy-Efficiency of Wearables Using Low-Precision Posit Arithmetic with PHEE

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Mallasén, David, Schiavone, Pasquale Davide, Del Barrio, Alberto A., Prieto-Matias, Manuel, Atienza, David
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Mallasén, David
Schiavone, Pasquale Davide
Del Barrio, Alberto A.
Prieto-Matias, Manuel
Atienza, David
author_facet Mallasén, David
Schiavone, Pasquale Davide
Del Barrio, Alberto A.
Prieto-Matias, Manuel
Atienza, David
contents Wearable edge AI biomedical devices are increasingly being used for continuous patient health monitoring, enabling real-time insights and extended data collection without the need for prolonged hospital stays. These devices must be energy efficient to minimize battery size, improve comfort, and reduce recharging intervals. This paper investigates the use of specialized low-precision arithmetic formats to enhance the energy efficiency of edge AI biomedical wearables. Specifically, we explore posit arithmetic, a floating-point-like representation, in two biomedical applications that leverage supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms: cough detection for chronic cough monitoring and R peak detection in ECG analysis. Our results reveal that 16-bit posits can replace 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point numbers with minimal accuracy loss in cough detection. For R peak detection, posit arithmetic achieves satisfactory accuracy with as few as 10 or 8 bits, compared to the 16-bit requirement for floating-point formats. To validate these findings beyond algorithm-level simulations, we introduce PHEE, a modular and extensible architecture that integrates the Coprosit posit coprocessor within a RISC-V-based system. Using the X-HEEP framework, PHEE serves as a proof-of-concept platform to quantify the practical energy benefits of low-precision posits in edge AI systems. Post-synthesis results targeting 16 nm TSMC technology show that the posit hardware targeting these ML-based biomedical applications can be 38% smaller and consume up to 42.3% less power at the functional unit level, with no performance compromise. These findings establish the potential of low-precision posit arithmetic to significantly improve the energy efficiency of edge AI biomedical devices.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_18253
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Increasing the Energy-Efficiency of Wearables Using Low-Precision Posit Arithmetic with PHEE
Mallasén, David
Schiavone, Pasquale Davide
Del Barrio, Alberto A.
Prieto-Matias, Manuel
Atienza, David
Hardware Architecture
Wearable edge AI biomedical devices are increasingly being used for continuous patient health monitoring, enabling real-time insights and extended data collection without the need for prolonged hospital stays. These devices must be energy efficient to minimize battery size, improve comfort, and reduce recharging intervals. This paper investigates the use of specialized low-precision arithmetic formats to enhance the energy efficiency of edge AI biomedical wearables. Specifically, we explore posit arithmetic, a floating-point-like representation, in two biomedical applications that leverage supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms: cough detection for chronic cough monitoring and R peak detection in ECG analysis. Our results reveal that 16-bit posits can replace 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point numbers with minimal accuracy loss in cough detection. For R peak detection, posit arithmetic achieves satisfactory accuracy with as few as 10 or 8 bits, compared to the 16-bit requirement for floating-point formats. To validate these findings beyond algorithm-level simulations, we introduce PHEE, a modular and extensible architecture that integrates the Coprosit posit coprocessor within a RISC-V-based system. Using the X-HEEP framework, PHEE serves as a proof-of-concept platform to quantify the practical energy benefits of low-precision posits in edge AI systems. Post-synthesis results targeting 16 nm TSMC technology show that the posit hardware targeting these ML-based biomedical applications can be 38% smaller and consume up to 42.3% less power at the functional unit level, with no performance compromise. These findings establish the potential of low-precision posit arithmetic to significantly improve the energy efficiency of edge AI biomedical devices.
title Increasing the Energy-Efficiency of Wearables Using Low-Precision Posit Arithmetic with PHEE
topic Hardware Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.18253