Systematic design and evaluation of a scalable reconfigurable multiplier scheme for HLS environments

Modern digital design has been greatly forced to offer More-Moore integration densities and very high operation frequencies for demanding applications. In this search-for-performance race, alternative and less radical More-than-Moore solutions are emerging, like reconfigurable computing. Reconfigurable computing stands between hardware and software and promises to offer the former's performance alongside with the latter's flexibility. Research in the field deals with fine or coarse grain reconfigurable components and efficient ways to map applications onto them. In this paper, a systematic design methodology and evaluation of a coarse grain reconfigurable component targeting the ASIC domain is presented. The specific component is a morphable architecture, that works in mutually exclusive modes, offering different functionality in each mode. The novelty presented in this paper is a systematic evaluation of the scalability of the morphable component. Continuously functionally improved modes are evaluated for performance, area and power, in order to choose the best architecture for a number of widely used DSP applications. Overall, a power* performance improvement of up to 24% is reported and a power* area of up to 13% compared to conventional, non-reconfigurable component architectures.