Computing approximately, and efficiently

Recent years have witnessed significant interest in the area of approximate computing. Much of this interest stems from the quest for new sources of computing efficiency in the face of diminishing benefits from technology scaling. We argue that trends in computing workloads will greatly increase the opportunities for approximate computing, describe the vision and key principles that have guided our work in this area, and outline a range of approximate computing techniques that we have developed at all layers of the computing stack, spanning circuits, architecture, and software.