"Approximation- Beyond the Tyranny of Digital Computing," (Rebooting Computing)

Prof. Esmaeilzadeh addressed a set of approaches to reducing power based on obtaining acceptable answers from components that may themselves be inaccurate or unreliable. For many applications such as searching, image processing, and analog sensor processing, an approximate result may be quite sufficient, and can be obtained with reduced power on mobile devices. This requires innovation on both the software and the hardware levels, and involves a change from the traditional paradigm where maximum accuracy was assumed to be essential.