MULTIFUNCTIONAL UNIT FOR REVERSE CONVERSION AND SIGN DETECTION BASED ON FIVE-MODULI SET {22N, 2N

A high dynamic range moduli set {2(2n), 2(n) + 1, 2(n) - 1, 2(n) + 3, 2(n) - 3} has recently been introduced as an arithmetically balanced five-moduli set for the residue number system (RNS). In order to utilize this moduli set in applications handling signed numbers, two important components are needed: a sign detector, and a signed reverse converter. However, having both of these components results in high-hardware requirements, which makes RNS impractical. This paper overcomes this problem by designing a unified unit that can perform both signed reverse conversion as well as sign detection through the reuse of hardware. To the authors' knowledge. this is the first attempt to design a sign detector for a moduli set that includes a {2(n)3} moduli. In order to achieve a hardware-amenable design, we first improved the performance of the previous unsigned reverse converter for this moduli set. Then, we extracted a sign-detection method from the structure of the reverse converter. Finally, we made an unsigned reverse converter-to-sign converter through the use of the extracted sign signal from the reverse converter. The experimental results show that the proposed reverse convertor and sign detector result in improvements of 31 and 28% in area and delay, respectively, as compared to the previous unsigned reverse convertor with sign output using a comparator.

Automated summary

The study introduced a high dynamic range moduli set and designed a unified unit for both signed reverse conversion and sign detection, achieving significant improvements in hardware efficiency.