An Energy-Efficient Random Number Generator for Stochastic Circuits

Stochastic circuits provide very high efficiency in terms of gate area and power consumption compared with conventional binary logic. However, they require random bit streams generated by stochastic number generators (SNGs), which account for a significant portion of area and energy offsetting their merits. In this paper, we propose a new SNG that significantly reduces area and energy while improving accuracy in progressive precision. Experimental results show that the proposed SNG reduces energy by more than 72% compared to the state-of-the-art designs.