Improving the Speed of Parallel Decimal Multiplication

Hardware support for decimal computer arithmetic is regaining popularity. One reason is the recent growth of decimal computations in commercial, scientific, financial, and Internet-based computer applications. Newly commercialized decimal arithmetic hardware units use radix-10 sequential multipliers that are rather slow for multiplication-intensive applications. Therefore, the future relevant processors are likely to host fast parallel decimal multiplication circuits. The corresponding hardware algorithms are normally composed of three steps: partial product generation (PPG), partial product reduction (PPR), and final carry-propagating addition. The state of the art is represented by two recent full solutions with alternative designs for all the three aforementioned steps. In addition, PPR by itself has been the focus of other recent studies. In this paper, we examine both of the full solutions and the impact of a PPR-only design on the appropriate one. In order to improve the speed of parallel decimal multiplication, we present a new PPG method, fine-tune the PPR method of one of the full solutions and the final addition scheme of the other; thus, assembling a new full solution. Logical Effort analysis and 0.13 mum synthesis show at least 13 percent speed advantage, but at a cost of at most 36 percent additional area consumption.