Title
Custom-Precision Mathematical Library Explorations for Code Profiling and Optimization
Abstract
The typical processors used for scientific computing have fixed-width data-paths. This implies that mathematical libraries were specifically developed to target each of these fixed precisions (binary16, binary32, binary64). However, to address the increasing energy consumption and throughput requirements of scientific applications, library and hardware designers are moving beyond this one-size-fits-all approach. In this article we propose to study the effects and benefits of using user-defined floating-point formats and target accuracies in calculations involving mathematical functions. Our tool collects input-data profiles and iteratively explores lower precisions for each call-site of a mathematical function in user applications. This profiling data will be a valuable asset for specializing and fine-tuning mathematical function implementations for a given application. We demonstrate the tool's capabilities on SGP4, a satellite tracking application. The profile data shows the potential for specialization and provides insight into answering where it is useful to provide variable-precision designs for elementary function evaluation.
Year
DOI
Venue
2020
10.1109/ARITH48897.2020.00026
2020 IEEE 27th Symposium on Computer Arithmetic (ARITH)
Keywords
DocType
ISSN
HPC,libm,floating-point,custom-precision,optimization,specialization
Conference
1063-6889
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
978-1-7281-7121-0
0
0.34
References 
Authors
8
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
David Defour113118.28
Pablo de Oliveira Castro2436.65
Istoan Matei300.34
Eric Petit45812.73