The FET-Proactive project OPRECOMP will provide a complete framework for transprecision computing, covering devices, circuits, software tools,and algorithms, along with the mathematical theory and physical foundations. The idea is to relax the maximum precision of calculations whenever it is not needed thus saving time and energy.
OPRECOMP will demonstrate that this idea holds in a huge range of application scenarios in the domains of IoT, Big Data Analytics, Deep Learning, and HPC simulations: from the sub-milliWatt to the MegaWatt range, spanning nine orders of magnitude. The project aims to prove that transprecision computing is the way to think about future systems from an industrial point of view.
OPRECOMP is coordinated by Cristiano Malossi from IBM Research Zurich; the project gathers 10 partners from Switzerland, Italy, France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. The consortium gathers an.interdisciplinary team of experts in Mathematics, Algorithms, Applications, Software Engineering, System Design, Integration, Circuits, Architecture, Physics, and Memory Technology.
This article covers in more detail the successes promised by the project and its early results.