Arbitrary long digit integer sorter HW/SW co-design

The coming of the multimedia era and information security era indicates the requirement for the processing of longer digit integer data. Previous sort researches have focused on the pure performance of large amounts of finite fixed digit/bit numbers. This paper discusses effectively solving arbitrarily long digit integer sorting problems by HW/SW co-design under the area×time² (AT²) price-performance constraint. This work proposes a multi-level (two-level) sort architecture to attain the objective: an accomplished fixed-digit (k-bit) hardware sorter implements the first or basic level sorting; a software programmed radix 2^k sort implements the second or higher level sorting. By super radix sorting, HW/SW co-design and reuse techniques, this work makes fixed-digit HW sorters more flexible and useful.