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Summary: The performance of the programmable integrated circuits (ICs) like digital signal processors (DSPs), central processing units (CPUs), and microcontrollers is highly dependent on the magnitude comparators. This article presents a new reliable and efficient 1‐bit comparator based on carbon nanotube field‐effect transistors (CNTFETs) technology. The gate diffusion input (GDI) technique is used to reduce the number of transistors. Also, single swing restoration (SR) transistors and transmission gate (TG) techniques are combined to attain full‐swing outputs with high driving capability. The low internal capacitances and the fewer number of internal nodes of the proposed comparator make it low‐power both in single‐bit and multibit (2‐bit, 4‐bit, 8‐bit, and 16‐bit) implementations. Variations analyses of the circuit and technology parameters are performed that show the cell efficiency. From the layout results, the 1‐bit and 16‐bit comparators occupy 0.1944 μm2 and 37.485 μm2 as the total die area, respectively. The proposed circuit is implemented in image processing in which the best performance compared with state‐of‐the‐art designs regarding hardware complexity, circuitry performance, and image quality assessments are confirmed, by at least 50% improvements of different critical parameters. The resulted figure of merits nominates the cell for future ICs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Using the carbon nanotube field-effect transistors technology to design approximate arithmetic circuits. • The gate diffusion input and dynamic threshold techniques are integrated to attain efficient circuits. • The presented approximate full adders show reliable performance during image processing. • The approximate full adders applied in bioimage processing. • Fat and water can be detected in bioimages by the presented approximate cells. Two new approximate full adders (FAs) are proposed by the multiplexers (MUXs) and OR gates with the gate diffusion input (GDI) technique. The cells are named GDI-based MUX approximate FAs (GMAFAs), GMAFA1, and GMAFA2. The threshold voltage drop of the GDI-based circuits is solved by carbon nanotube field-effect transistors (CNTFETs) technology and the dynamic threshold (DT) technique. The FAs have accurate C out , approximate Sum, and a low number of transistors. They are low-power, high-speed, and energy-efficient for ripple-carry adders (RCAs). The GMAFA1 and GMAFA2 have a total area of 0.068 µm2 and 0.119 µm2, respectively, which demonstrate 27.8% and 54.55% improvement in power-delay-area-product (PDAP) in comparison with the best references. The results of error distance (ED), normalized mean error distance (NMED), power signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), and energy-saving confirm the accuracy of the presented cells for image processing applications. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]