A reconfigurable low-power high-performance matrix multiplier design

A novel reconfigurable low-power high-performance matrix multiplier architecture and its component circuits are presented. The processor can be easily reconfigured to compute the product of matrices X_nK and Y_km for any integers n, k, m and any item precision b (ranging from 4 to 64 bits) thus maximizing the utilization of the hardware available. As a typical example, the hardware equivalent to one 64×64 bit high precision multiplier in the system can be directly reconfigured to produce the product of two matrices X_8×8 and Y_8×8 of 8-bit items in 9 pipeline cycles, which would require 512 multiplications (done by large multipliers) in a non-reconfigurable high precision system. Given an input stream of h×h matrix pairs with b-bit items, the processor, called matrix multiplier of size s (note s=hb), may consist of an array of (s/m)² of m×m small multipliers (m=4 case is illustrated), a few arrays of adders each adding three numbers, an array of accumulators and corresponding simple reconfiguration switches. To compute the product of X_nK and Y_km, of item precision b on the proposed processor of size s we only need to partition X_nK and Y_km into s/b X s/b sub-matrices, reconfigure the processor according to the values of s (fixed) and b (input parameter), compute the products of submatrices, and accumulate them for the desired result in pipelined fashion. A recently proposed shift switch logic, a nonbinary logic for arithmetic circuits, is utilized in the design. The novel logic operates 4-bit state signals where no more than half of the signal bits are subject to value-change at any logic stage, which, verified by SPICE simulation, significantly reduces the large circuit power dissipation while keeping high performance in speed and small VLSI area