Computing systems are conventionally designed to operate as accurately as possible. However, this trend faces severe technology challenges, such as power consumption, circuit reliability, and high performance. For nearly half a century, performance and power consumption of computing systems have been consistently improved by relying mostly on technology scaling. As per Dennard’s scaling, the size of a transistor has been considerably shrunk and the supply voltage has been reduced over the years, such that circuits operate at higher frequencies but nearly at the same power dissipation level. However, as Dennard’s scaling tends toward an end, it is difficult to further improve performance under the same power constraints. Power consumption has been a major concern, and it is now an industry-wide problem of critical importance. In addition to power, reliability deteriorates when the feature size of complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology is reduced below 7 nm, because parameter variations and faults at advanced nanoscales become difficult to control and prevent. Thus, to ensure the complete accuracy of signals, logic values, devices, and interconnects, manufacturing and verification costs will increase significantly.

中文翻译：

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近似计算的回顾性和前瞻性观点

计算系统通常被设计为尽可能准确地运行。然而，这种趋势面临着严峻的技术挑战，例如功耗、电路可靠性和高性能。近半个世纪以来，计算系统的性能和功耗一直在不断提高，主要依靠技术扩展。根据 Dennard 的缩放比例，多年来，晶体管的尺寸已大大缩小，电源电压也已降低，因此电路可以在更高的频率下运行，但功耗水平几乎相同。但是，随着 Dennard 的缩放趋于结束，在相同的功率限制下很难进一步提高性能。功耗一直是一个主要问题，现在它是一个行业范围内至关重要的问题。除了实力，当互补金属氧化物半导体 (CMOS) 技术的特征尺寸减小到 7 nm 以下时，可靠性会下降，因为先进纳米尺度的参数变化和故障变得难以控制和预防。因此，为了确保信号、逻辑值、器件和互连的完全准确性，制造和验证成本将显着增加。