Flexible multiplier blocks for accelerated processing in a 3D softchip adaptive computing system
Oliver Pfaender, Stefan W. Lachowicz, HJ Pfleiderer · Edith Cowan University Research Online (Edith Cowan University) · 2005
The 3D-SoftChip Adaptive Computing System utilizes advanced wafer bonding techniques to vertically integrate two 2D chips. It manipulates configurable hardware arithmetic primitives to form a powerful soft-configurable and highly efficient processing system, providing high computation power and data throughput for today's telecommunication, photonic networking and content-rich multimedia applications. This paper first reviews the 3D-SoftChip architecture and then concentrates on the accelerating processing elements which feature a run-time reconfigurable multiplier with data exchange interfaces and a concatenation option to enable adaptable word-length computations. A flexible and low-overhead multiplier architecture suitable for enhancing the array of processing elements is presented. Finally, the interconnect requirements for full-flexibility multiplication is estimated, and a simple way of transferring a considerable amount of control circuitry from the intelligent configurable switch into the processing elements to reduce the switch complexity is proposed.