  Approximate computing has recently emerged as a promising method to meet the
low power requirements of digital designs. The erroneous outputs produced in
approximate computing can be partially a function of each chip's process
variation. We show that, in such schemes, the erroneous outputs produced on
each chip instance can reveal the identity of the chip that performed the
computation, possibly jeopardizing user privacy. In this work, we perform
simulation experiments on 32-bit Ripple Carry Adders, Carry Lookahead Adders,
and Han-Carlson Adders running at over-scaled operating points. Our results
show that identification is possible, we contrast the identifiability of each
type of adder, and we quantify how success of identification varies with the
extent of over-scaling and noise. Our results are the first to show that
approximate digital computations may compromise privacy. Designers of future
approximate computing systems should be aware of the possible privacy leakages
and decide whether mitigation is warranted in their application.
