Deriving stencil hardware accelerators from a single higher-order function

Stencil computations are array based algorithms that apply a computation to all array elements in a fixed regular pattern and can be found in many scientific and engineering applications. Parallelization of these applications becomes more and more important in order to keep up with the demand for computing power. FPGAs offer a lot of computing power but are considered hard to program. In this paper, a design methodology based on transformations of higher-order functions is introduced to facilitate this parallelization process. Using this methodology, efficient FPGA hardware is derived achieving good performance. Two architectures for heat flow computations are synthesized for an FPGA and evaluated. To show the general applicability of the design methodology, several applications have been implemented

Comprehensive Evaluation of High-Speed and Medium-Speed Implementations of Five SHA-3 Finalists Using Xilinx and Altera FPGAs

In this paper we present a comprehensive comparison of all Round 3 SHA-3 candidates and the current standard SHA-2 from the point of view of hardware performance in modern FPGAs. Each algorithm is implemented using multiple architectures based on the concepts of iteration, folding, unrolling, pipelining, and circuit replication. Trade-offs between speed and area are investigated, and the best architecture from the point of view of the throughput to area ratio is identified. Finally, all algorithms are ranked based on their overall performance in FPGAs. The characteristic features of each algorithm important from the point of view of its implementation in hardware are identified