TY - GEN
T1 - FFPU
T2 - 2009 International Conference on Field-Programmable Technology, FPT'09
AU - Hockert, Neil
AU - Compton, Katherine
N1 - Copyright:
Copyright 2010 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2009
Y1 - 2009
N2 - Embedded systems designers frequently avoid using floating-point computation because it is too costly to include a floating-point unit (FPU) in an embedded processor. However, the performance of software floating-point libraries can be lacking. Therefore we propose a Fractured Floating Point Unit (FFPU) - a hybrid solution using a mix of custom hardware instructions and software code. An FFPU is designed as a compromise between software libraries and custom FPUs in both area and performance. We present three 32-bit FFPUs designs for a Nios II soft processor, and compare their performance and area to the baseline Nios II and a Nios II with a complete FPU. The FFPUs improve floating-point addition and subtraction performance by 24 to 52 percent over the baseline, with an ALM increase of only 12 to 32 percent, and no increase in DSP blocks.
AB - Embedded systems designers frequently avoid using floating-point computation because it is too costly to include a floating-point unit (FPU) in an embedded processor. However, the performance of software floating-point libraries can be lacking. Therefore we propose a Fractured Floating Point Unit (FFPU) - a hybrid solution using a mix of custom hardware instructions and software code. An FFPU is designed as a compromise between software libraries and custom FPUs in both area and performance. We present three 32-bit FFPUs designs for a Nios II soft processor, and compare their performance and area to the baseline Nios II and a Nios II with a complete FPU. The FFPUs improve floating-point addition and subtraction performance by 24 to 52 percent over the baseline, with an ALM increase of only 12 to 32 percent, and no increase in DSP blocks.
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U2 - 10.1109/FPT.2009.5377622
DO - 10.1109/FPT.2009.5377622
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:77949460875
SN - 9781424443772
T3 - Proceedings of the 2009 International Conference on Field-Programmable Technology, FPT'09
SP - 143
EP - 150
BT - Proceedings of the 2009 International Conference on Field-Programmable Technology, FPT'09
Y2 - 9 December 2009 through 11 December 2009
ER -