A radix 4 delay commutator for fast Fourier transform processor implementation

The development is described of a semicustom delay commutator circuit to support the implementation of high-speed fast Fourier transform processors based on the radix 4 pipeline FFT algorithm of J.H. McClellan and R.J. Purdy (1978). The delay commutator is a 108000-transistor circuit comprising 12288 shift register stages and approximately 2000 gates of random logic realized with 2.5-micrometer design rule CMOS standard cell technology. It operates at a 10-MHz clock rate, which processes data at a 40-MHz rate. The delay commutator is suitable for implementing processors that compute transforms of 16, 64, 256, 1024, and 4096 (complex) points. It is implemented as a 4-bit-wide data slice to facilitate cocatenation to accommodate common data word sizes and to use a standard 48-pin dual-in-line package.