Analyzing the Use of Taylor Series Approximation in Hardware and Embedded Software for Good Cost-Accuracy Tradeoffs

This work proposes a universal method to approximate computational functions. It employs Taylor series to compute approximations and provide results with high accuracy at low cost. A multitude of software and hardware implementation designs are presented and evaluated on a Zynq-7000 APSoC for their area cost, accuracy and time performance. Results show that embedded software approaches tend to provide excellent accuracy at a better cost/accuracy rate, and that hardware projects can save resources costs by slightly relaxing their accuracy requirements.