Reaching intrinsic compute efficiency requires adaptable micro-architectures

Today’s embedded applications demand high compute performance at a tight energy budget, which requires a high compute efficiency. Compute efficiency is upper-bound by the technology node, however in practice programmable devices are orders of magnitude away from achieving this intrinsic compute efficiency. This work investigates the sources of inefficiency that cause this, and identifies four key design guidelines that can steer compute efficiency towards sub-picojoule per operation. Based on these guidelines a novel architecture with adaptive micro-architecture, and accompanying tool flow is proposed.\u3cbr/\u3