SSA: A Uniformly Recursive Bidirection-Sequence Systolic Sorter Array

Abstract

The use of reconfigurable circuits with parallel computing capabilities has been explored to enhance sorting performance and reduce power consumption. Nonetheless, most sorting algorithms utilizing dedicated processors are designed solely based on the parallelization of the algorithm, lacking considerations of specialized hardware structures. This leads to problems, including but not limited to the consumption of excessive I/O interface resources, on-chip storage resources, and complex layout wiring. In this paper, we propose a Systolic Sorter Array, implemented by a Uniform Recurrence Equation (URE) with highly parameterised in terms of data size, bit width and type. Leveraging this uniformly recursive structure, the sorter can simultaneously sort two independent sequences. In addition, we implemented global and local control modes on the FPGA to achieve higher computational frequencies. In our experiments, we have demonstrated the speed-up ratio of SSA relative to other state of the art (SOTA) sorting algorithms using C++ $std$ :: $sort()$ as benchmark. Inheriting the benefits from the Systolic Array architecture, the SSA reaches up to 810 Mhz computing frequency on the U200. The results of our study show that SSA outperforms other sorting algorithms in terms of throughput, speed-up ratio, and computation frequency.