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Task Skipping
Task skipping is an approximate computing technique that allows to skip code blocks according to a specific boolean condition to be checked at run-time. This technique is usually applied on the most computational-intensive section of the code. It relies on the fact that a tuple of values sequentially computed are going to be useful only if the whole tuple meet certain conditions. Knowing that a value of the tuple invalides or probably will invalidate the whole tuple, it is possible to avoid the computation of the rest of the tuple. Code example The example that follows provides the result of task skipping applied on this C-like source code for (int i = 0; i < N; i++) Skipping a task See also * Loop perforation * |
Approximate Computing
Approximate computing is an emerging paradigm for energy-efficient and/or high-performance design. It includes a plethora of computation techniques that return a possibly inaccurate result rather than a guaranteed accurate result, and that can be used for applications where an approximate result is sufficient for its purpose. One example of such situation is for a search engine where no exact answer may exist for a certain search query and hence, many answers may be acceptable. Similarly, occasional dropping of some frames in a video application can go undetected due to perceptual limitations of humans. Approximate computing is based on the observation that in many scenarios, although performing exact computation requires large amount of resources, allowing bounded approximation can provide disproportionate gains in performance and energy, while still achieving acceptable result accuracy. For example, in ''k''-means clustering algorithm, allowing only 5% loss in classification ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Code Block
In computer programming, a block or code block or block of code is a lexical structure of source code which is grouped together. Blocks consist of one or more declarations and statements. A programming language that permits the creation of blocks, including blocks nested within other blocks, is called a block-structured programming language. Blocks are fundamental to structured programming, where control structures are formed from blocks. Blocks have two functions: to group statements so that they can be treated as one statement, and to define scopes for names to distinguish them from the same name used elsewhere. In a block-structured programming language, the objects named in outer blocks are visible inside inner blocks, unless they are masked by an object declared with the same name. History Ideas of block structure were developed in the 1950s during the development of the first autocodes, and were formalized in the Algol 58 and Algol 60 reports. Algol 58 introduced the n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Boolean Data Type
In computer science, the Boolean (sometimes shortened to Bool) is a data type that has one of two possible values (usually denoted ''true'' and ''false'') which is intended to represent the two truth values of logic and Boolean algebra. It is named after George Boole, who first defined an algebraic system of logic in the mid 19th century. The Boolean data type is primarily associated with conditional statements, which allow different actions by changing control flow depending on whether a programmer-specified Boolean ''condition'' evaluates to true or false. It is a special case of a more general ''logical data type—''logic does not always need to be Boolean (see probabilistic logic). Generalities In programming languages with a built-in Boolean data type, such as Pascal, C, Python or Java, the comparison operators such as > and ≠ are usually defined to return a Boolean value. Conditional and iterative commands may be defined to test Boolean-valued expressions. L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Run Time (program Lifecycle Phase)
Execution in computer and software engineering is the process by which a computer or virtual machine interprets and acts on the instructions of a computer program. Each instruction of a program is a description of a particular action which must be carried out, in order for a specific problem to be solved. Execution involves repeatedly following a " fetch–decode–execute" cycle for each instruction done by the control unit. As the executing machine follows the instructions, specific effects are produced in accordance with the semantics of those instructions. Programs for a computer may be executed in a batch process without human interaction or a user may type commands in an interactive session of an interpreter. In this case, the "commands" are simply program instructions, whose execution is chained together. The term run is used almost synonymously. A related meaning of both "to run" and "to execute" refers to the specific action of a user starting (or ''launching'' o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Tuple
In mathematics, a tuple is a finite sequence or ''ordered list'' of numbers or, more generally, mathematical objects, which are called the ''elements'' of the tuple. An -tuple is a tuple of elements, where is a non-negative integer. There is only one 0-tuple, called the ''empty tuple''. A 1-tuple and a 2-tuple are commonly called a singleton and an ordered pair, respectively. The term ''"infinite tuple"'' is occasionally used for ''"infinite sequences"''. Tuples are usually written by listing the elements within parentheses "" and separated by commas; for example, denotes a 5-tuple. Other types of brackets are sometimes used, although they may have a different meaning. An -tuple can be formally defined as the image of a function that has the set of the first natural numbers as its domain. Tuples may be also defined from ordered pairs by a recurrence starting from an ordered pair; indeed, an -tuple can be identified with the ordered pair of its first elements and its t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
C (programming Language)
C (''pronounced'' '' – like the letter c'') is a general-purpose programming language. It was created in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie and remains very widely used and influential. By design, C's features cleanly reflect the capabilities of the targeted Central processing unit, CPUs. It has found lasting use in operating systems code (especially in Kernel (operating system), kernels), device drivers, and protocol stacks, but its use in application software has been decreasing. C is commonly used on computer architectures that range from the largest supercomputers to the smallest microcontrollers and embedded systems. A successor to the programming language B (programming language), B, C was originally developed at Bell Labs by Ritchie between 1972 and 1973 to construct utilities running on Unix. It was applied to re-implementing the kernel of the Unix operating system. During the 1980s, C gradually gained popularity. It has become one of the most widely used programming langu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Loop Perforation
Loop perforation is an approximate computing technique that allows to regularly skip some iterations of a loop.Steilos Sidiroglou, Sasa Misailovic, Henry Hoffmann, and Martin Rinard"Managing Performance vs. Accuracy Trade-offs With Loop Perforation."ESEC/FSE. September, 2011 It relies on one parameter: the ''perforation rate''. The perforation rate can be interpreted as the number of iteration to skip each time or the number of iterations to perform before skipping one. Variants of loop perforation include those that skip iterations deterministically at regular intervals, those that skip iterations at the beginning or the end of the loop, and those that skip a random sample of iterations. The compiler may select the perforation variant at the compile-time, or include instrumentation that allows the runtime system to adaptively adjust the perforation strategy and perforation rate to satisfy the end-to-end accuracy goal. Loop perforation techniques were first developed by MIT senior ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Memoization
In computing, memoization or memoisation is an optimization technique used primarily to speed up computer programs by storing the results of expensive function calls to pure functions and returning the cached result when the same inputs occur again. Memoization has also been used in other contexts (and for purposes other than speed gains), such as in simple mutually recursive descent parsing. It is a type of caching, distinct from other forms of caching such as buffering and page replacement. In the context of some logic programming languages, memoization is also known as tabling. Etymology The term ''memoization'' was coined by Donald Michie in 1968 and is derived from the Latin word ('to be remembered'), usually truncated as ''memo'' in American English, and thus carries the meaning of 'turning he results ofa function into something to be remembered'. While ''memoization'' might be confused with ''memorization'' (because they are etymological cognates), ''memoization'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
