Design of a Bit-Level Super-Systolic Array

A systolic array formed by interconnecting a set of identical data-processing cells in a uniform manner is a combination of an algorithm and a circuit that implements it, and is closely related conceptually to arithmetic pipeline. High-performance computation on a large array of cells has been an important feature of systolic array. To achieve even higher degree of concurrency, it is desirable to make cells of systolic array themselves systolic array as well. The structure of systolic array with its cells consisting of another systolic array is to be called super-systolic array. This paper proposes a scalable bit-level super-systolic amy which can be adopted in the VLSI design including regular interconnection and functional primitives that are typical for a systolic architecture. This architecture is focused on highly regular computational structures that avoids the need for a large number of global interconnection required in general VLSI implementation. A bit-level super-systolic FIR filter is selected as an example of bit-level super-systolic array. The derived bit-level super-systolic FIR filter has been modeled and simulated in RT level using VHDL, then synthesized using Synopsys Design Compiler based on Hynix cell library. Compared conventional word-level systolic array, the newly proposed bit-level super-systolic arrays are efficient when it comes to area and throughput.