New hardware architecture for bit-counting
Ahmed Dalalah, Sami Baba, Abdallah Tubaishat · 2006
Bit-counting implementations are used to count the number of 1 s in a given computer word. There are several techniques to implement bit-counting operation. These techniques are either software algorithms or specialized hardware techniques. The hardware implementations require dedicated hardware supported in the processor or associated math co-processor. The performance of the hardware-supported bit-counting was found to be superior to most software implementations (such as serial shifting). In this paper, a new hardware implementation of bit-counting routine is presented that reduces the number of logic gates and the delay in comparison with existing implementations. The performance of the proposed hardware bit-counting implementations is further investigated and evaluated.