Reducing power consumption in integrated circuits

Abstract

Techniques for replacing input values being loaded into a computational circuit are described. Small input values such as denormal numbers can be replaced with alternative values such as zeros to reduce switching activity in the computational circuit, and thus reduce power consumption. In applications such as most neural networks, the impact on the prediction results when replacing small numbers with zeros can be negligible. In applications where high precision computations may be desirable, the input values can be loaded into the computation circuit without modification.