Approximate Computing

This book explores the technological developments at various levels of abstraction, of the new paradigm of approximate computing. The authors describe in a single-source the state-of-the-art, covering the entire spectrum of research activities in approximate computing, bridging device, circuit, architecture, and system levels.  Content includes tutorials, reviews and surveys of current theoretical/experimental results, design methodologies and applications developed in approximate computing for a wide scope of readership and specialists.

Weiqiang Liu is currently a Professor and the Vice Dean of College of Electronic and Information Engineering & College of Integrated Circuits, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA), Nanjing, China. He received the B.Sc. degree in Information Engineering from NUAA and the Ph.D. degree in Electronic Engineering from Queen's University Belfast (QUB), Belfast, United Kingdom, in 2006 and 2012, respectively. In Dec. 2013, he joined the College of Electronic and Information Engineering, NUAA, where he is now a full professor.

His research interest is energy efficient and secure computing integrated circuits and systems that include approximate computing, computer arithmetic, hardware security, VLSI design for DSP and cryptography, and mixed-signal integrated circuits. His research has been funded by Natural Science Foundation China (NSFC),  State Grid Corporation of China, and Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province et al. He has published one research book by Artech House and over 160 leading journal and conference papers (over 60 IEEE and ACM journals). His papers were selected as the Highlight Paper of IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers in the 2021 Januray Issue, the two Feature Papers of IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine in the 2021 4th issue and IEEE Transactions on Computers in the 2017 December issue, and IET Computer & Design Techniques Editor's Choice Award in 2021. He received the prestigious Excellent Young Scientists Fund from NSFC in 2020 and listed in the Stanford University's 2020 list of the top 2% scientists in the world (Computer Hardware and Architecture). 

He has served as a Steering Committe Member of IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems and IEEE Transactions on Multi-Scale Computing Systems, Associate Editors of IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Paper, IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topic in Computing and Computers (TETC), IEEE Transactions on Computers, IEEE Open Journal of Computer Soceity and IET Computers & Digital Techniques, a Guest Editor of Proceedings of the IEEE and IEEE Nanotechnology Magazine, the member of 2020 TETC and AsianHOST 2021 Best Paper Award Committee. He is the Second Representative of IEEE Computer Society to the IEEE Nanotechnology Council (NTC). He is the Program Co-Chair of IEEE Symposium on Computer Arithmetic (ARITH), and program members for a number of international conferences including DAC, ARITH, DATE, ASP-DAC, ISCAS, ASAP, ISVLSI, ICCD, GLSVLSI, AsianHOST, NANORACH, AICAS, SiPS, NMDC and ICONIP. He is a speaker of DATE 2022, IEEE ISCAS 2021 and COINS Tutorial. He is a member of both Circuits & Systems for Communications (CASCOM) Technical Committee and VLSI Systems and Applications (VSA) Technical Committee, IEEE Circuits and Systems Society. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, CIE and CCF.

 

Fabrizio Lombardi graduated in 1977 from the University of Essex (UK) with a B.Sc. (Hons.) in Electronic Engineering. In 1977 he joined the Microwave Research Unit at University College London, where he received the Master in Microwaves and Modern Optics (1978), the Diploma in Microwave Engineering (1978) and the Ph. D. from the University of London (1982). He is currently the holder of the International Test Conference (ITC) Endowed Chair at Northeastern University, Boston. Currently, Dr. Lombardi is the 2022-2023 President; of the IEEE Nanotechnology Council (NTC); in 2021 he was 2nd VP of the IEEE Computer Society (CS). He is also a member of the IEEE Publication Services and Products Board (PSPB) (2019-2023). He was the VP of Publications of the IEEE CS (2019-2020) and the NTC (2020). He has been appointed on Executive Boards of many non-profit organizations (such as Computing-in-the-Core, now code.org the non-partisan advocacy coalition for K-12 Computer Science education) as well as the Computer Society (as an elected two-term member of its Board of Governors (2012-2017)) and the IEEE (as an appointed member of the Future Directions Committee (2014-2017)).

In the past, Dr. Lombardi has been a two 2-year term Editor-in-Chief (2007-2010), Associate Editor-in-Chief (2000-2006) and Associate Editor (1996-2000) of the IEEE Transactions on Computers, the inaugural two-term Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing (2013-2017); Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology (2014-2019) as well as member of the Editorial Boards of the ACM Journal of Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems, the IEEE Design & Test Magazine and IEEE Transactions on CAD of ICAS. Dr. Lombardi has been twice a Distinguished Visitor of the IEEE Computer Society (1990-1993 and 2001-2004).

Dr. Lombardi is a Fellow of the IEEE for ”contributions to testing and fault tolerance of digital systems”. He was the recipient of the 2011 Meritorious Service Award and elevated to Golden Core membership in the same year by the IEEE CS; he was the Chair of the 2016 and 2017 IEEE CS Fellow Evaluation Committee. He has been awarded the 2019 NTC Distinguished Service Award, the 2019 “Spirit of the CS” Award and the 2021 T Michael Elliott Distinguished Service Certificate from the CS. He has received many professional awards: the Visiting Fellowship at the British Columbia Advanced System Institute, University of Victoria, Canada (1988), twice the Texas Experimental Engineering Station Research Fellowship (1991-1992, 1997-1998) the Halliburton Professorship (1995), the Outstanding Engineering Research Award at Northeastern University (2004) and an International Research Award from the Ministry of Science and Education of Japan (1993-1999). Dr. Lombardi was the recipient of the 1985/86 Research Initiation Award from the IEEE/Engineering Foundation and a Silver Quill Award from Motorola-Austin (1996). Together with his students, his manuscripts have been selected for the best paper awards at technical events/meeting such as IEEE DFT and IEEE/ACM Nanoarch.

Dr. Lombardi has been involved in organizing many international symposia, conferences and workshops sponsored by professional organizations as well as guest editor of Special Issues in archival journals and magazines. His research interests are emerging computing paradigms and technologies (mostly nanoscale circuits and magnetic devices), memory systems, VLSI design and fault/defect tolerance of digital systems. He has extensively published in these areas and coauthored/edited ten books.