Minimal weight digit set conversions

Copyright © 2004 IEEEWe consider the problem of recoding a number to minimize the number of nonzero digits in its representation, that is, to minimize the weight of the representation. A general sliding window scheme is described that extends minimal binary sliding window conversion to arbitrary radix and to encompass signed digit sets. This new conversion expresses a number of known recoding techniques as special cases. Proof that this scheme achieves minimal weight for a given digit set is provided and results concerning the theoretical average and worst-case weight are derived.Braden Phillips and Neil Burges

A Modified Architecture for Radix-4 Booth Multiplier with Adaptive Hold Logic

High speed digital multipliers are most efficiently used in many applications such as Fourier transform, discrete cosine transforms, and digital filtering. The throughput of the multipliers is based on speed of the multiplier, and then the entire performance of the circuit depends on it. The pMOS transistor in negative bias cause negative bias temperature instability (NBTI), which increases the threshold voltage of the transistor and reduces the multiplier speed. Similarly, the nMOS transistor in positive bias cause positive bias temperature instability (PBTI).These effects reduce the transistor speed and the system may fail due to timing violations. So here a new multiplier was designed with novel adaptive hold logic (AHL) using Radix-4 Modified Booth Multiplier. By using Radix-4 Modified Booth Encoding (MBE), we can reduce the number of partial products by half. Modified booth multiplier helps to provide higher throughput with low power consumption. This can adjust the AHL circuit to reduce the performance degradation. The expected result will be reduce threshold voltage, increase throughput and speed and also reduce power. This modified multiplier design is coded by Verilog and simulated using Xilinx ISE 12.1 and implemented in Spartan 3E FPGA kit

Verification of integer multipliers on the arithmetic bit level

One of the most severe short-comings of currently available equivalence checkers is their inability to verify integer multipliers. In this paper, we present a bit level reverse-engineering technique that can be integrated into standard equivalence checking flows. We propose a Boolean mapping algorithm that extracts a network of half adders from the gate netlist of an addition circuit. Once the arithmetic bit level representation of the circuit is obtained, equivalence checking can be performed using simple arithmetic operations. Experimental results show the promise of our approach

Formal Verification of an Iterative Low-Power x86 Floating-Point Multiplier with Redundant Feedback

We present the formal verification of a low-power x86 floating-point multiplier. The multiplier operates iteratively and feeds back intermediate results in redundant representation. It supports x87 and SSE instructions in various precisions and can block the issuing of new instructions. The design has been optimized for low-power operation and has not been constrained by the formal verification effort. Additional improvements for the implementation were identified through formal verification. The formal verification of the design also incorporates the implementation of clock-gating and control logic. The core of the verification effort was based on ACL2 theorem proving. Additionally, model checking has been used to verify some properties of the floating-point scheduler that are relevant for the correct operation of the unit.Comment: In Proceedings ACL2 2011, arXiv:1110.447

Power-Aware Design Methodologies for FPGA-Based Implementation of Video Processing Systems

The increasing capacity and capabilities of FPGA devices in recent years provide an attractive option for performance-hungry applications in the image and video processing domain. FPGA devices are often used as implementation platforms for image and video processing algorithms for real-time applications due to their programmable structure that can exploit inherent spatial and temporal parallelism. While performance and area remain as two main design criteria, power consumption has become an important design goal especially for mobile devices. Reduction in power consumption can be achieved by reducing the supply voltage, capacitances, clock frequency and switching activities in a circuit. Switching activities can be reduced by architectural optimization of the processing cores such as adders, multipliers, multiply and accumulators (MACS), etc. This dissertation research focuses on reducing the switching activities in digital circuits by considering data dependencies in bit level, word level and block level neighborhoods in a video frame. The bit level data neighborhood dependency consideration for power reduction is illustrated in the design of pipelined array, Booth and log-based multipliers. For an array multiplier, operands of the multipliers are partitioned into higher and lower parts so that the probability of the higher order parts being zero or one increases. The gating technique for the pipelined approach deactivates part(s) of the multiplier when the above special values are detected. For the Booth multiplier, the partitioning and gating technique is integrated into the Booth recoding scheme. In addition, a delay correction strategy is developed for the Booth multiplier to reduce the switching activities of the sign extension part in the partial products. A novel architecture design for the computation of log and inverse-log functions for the reduction of power consumption in arithmetic circuits is also presented. This also utilizes the proposed partitioning and gating technique for further dynamic power reduction by reducing the switching activities. The word level and block level data dependencies for reducing the dynamic power consumption are illustrated by presenting the design of a 2-D convolution architecture. Here the similarities of the neighboring pixels in window-based operations of image and video processing algorithms are considered for reduced switching activities. A partitioning and detection mechanism is developed to deactivate the parallel architecture for window-based operations if higher order parts of the pixel values are the same. A neighborhood dependent approach (NDA) is incorporated with different window buffering schemes. Consideration of the symmetry property in filter kernels is also applied with the NDA method for further reduction of switching activities. The proposed design methodologies are implemented and evaluated in a FPGA environment. It is observed that the dynamic power consumption in FPGA-based circuit implementations is significantly reduced in bit level, data level and block level architectures when compared to state-of-the-art design techniques. A specific application for the design of a real-time video processing system incorporating the proposed design methodologies for low power consumption is also presented. An image enhancement application is considered and the proposed partitioning and gating, and NDA methods are utilized in the design of the enhancement system. Experimental results show that the proposed multi-level power aware methodology achieves considerable power reduction. Research work is progressing In utilizing the data dependencies in subsequent frames in a video stream for the reduction of circuit switching activities and thereby the dynamic power consumption