Enhanced Hybrid Temporal Computing Using Deterministic Summations for Ultra-Low-Power Accelerators

Sachin Sachdeva1, Jincong Lu1, Wantong Li1, Sheldon Tan2
1University of California, Riverside, 2University of California at Riverside


Abstract

This paper presents an accuracy-enhanced Hybrid Temporal Computing (E-HTC) framework for ultra-low-power hardware accelerators using deterministic additions. The frame- work is inspired by the recently proposed HTC architecture, which leverages pulse-rate and temporal data encoding to reduce switching activity and energy consumption but suffers accuracy loss due to its use of a multiplexer (MUX) for scaled addition. To address this limitation, we propose two bitstream addi- tion schemes: (1) an Exact Multiple-input Binary Accumulator (EMBA), which performs precise binary accumulation over multiple-input bitstreams, and (2) a Deterministic Threshold- based Scaled Adder (DTSA), which employs threshold-based logic for scaled addition. These adders are integrated into a multiplier–accumulator (MAC) unit supporting both unipolar and bipolar encodings. To validate the framework, we implement two hardware accelerators: a Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter and an 8-point Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT)/iDCT engine. Experimental results on a 4 × 4 MAC show that, in unipolar mode, E-HTC matches the RMSE of state-of-the-art Counter- Based Stochastic Computing (CBSC) MAC, improves accuracy by 94% over MUX-based HTC, and reduces power and area by up to 23% and 7% compared to MUX-based HTC and by over 64% and 74% compared to CBSC. In bipolar mode, the E- HTC MAC achieves an RMSE of 2.09%—an 83% improvement over bipolar MUX-based HTC and approaches bipolar CBSC's RMSE of 1.40% with area and power savings of up to 28% and 43% relative to MUX-based HTC and around 76% each relative to CBSC. In FIR filter experiments, both E-HTC variants achieve PSNR gains of 3–5 dB (30–45% RMSE reduction) over MUX-based HTC, while delivering up to 13% power and 3% area savings. Compared to CBSC, E-HTC reduces area by nearly 64% and power by 62%. For DCT/iDCT, E-HTC boosts PSNR by 10–13 dB (70–75% RMSE reduction) while providing substantial area and power savings over both MUX- and CBSC- based designs.