Approximate Integer and Floating-Point Dividers with Near-Zero Error Bias

We propose approximate dividers with near-zero error bias for both integer and floating-point numbers. The integer divider, INZeD, is designed using a novel, analytically deduced error-correction method in an approximate log based divider. The floating-point divider, FaNZeD, is based on a highly optimized mantissa divider that is inspired by INZeD. Both of the dividers are error configurable.Our results show that the INZeD dividers have error bias in the range of 0.01-4.4% with area-delay product improvement of $25\times - 95 \times $ and power improvement of $4.7 \times - 15 \times $ when compared to the accurate integer divider. Likewise, compared to IEEE single-precision floating-point divider, FaNZeD dividers offer up to $985 \times $ area-delay product and $77 \times $ power improvements with error bias in the range of $0.04 -2.2$%. Most importantly, using our FaNZeD dividers, floating-point arithmetic can be more resource-efficient than fixed-point arithmetic because most of the FaNZeD dividers are even smaller and have better area-delay product than the 8bit and 16-bit accurate integer dividers. Finally, our dividers show negligible effect on the output quality when evaluated with AlexNet and JPEG compression applications.