Run-time reconfigurable multi-precision floating-point multiplier on FPGA

What is it about?

A hardware-efficient floating-point multiplier employing a novel binary multiplier algorithm using vedic mathematics. The precision can be varied at run-time as per the accuracy requirements.

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Why is it important?

Floating-point multiplication is one of the crucial operations in many application domains such as image processing, signal processing etc. But every application requires different working features. Some need high precision, some need low power consumption, low latency etc. But IEEE-754 format is not really flexible for these specifications and also design is complex. Optimal run-time reconfigurable hardware implementations may need the use of custom floating-point formats that do not necessarily follow IEEE specified sizes. In this paper, we present a run-time-reconfigurable floating point multiplier implemented on FPGA with custom floating point format for different applications. This floating point multiplier can have 6 modes of operations depending on the accuracy or application requirement. With the use of optimal design with custom IPs (Intellectual Properties), a better implementation is done by truncating the inputs before multiplication. And a combination of Karatsuba algorithm and Urdhva-Tiryagbhyam algorithm (Vedic Mathematics) is used to implement unsigned binary multiplier. This further increases the efficiency of the multiplier.

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