Bank-partition and multi-fetch scheme for floating-point special function units in multi-core systems

A table loader unit with bank-partition and multi-fetch feature is proposed for multiple special function units in multi-core systems. By sharing the look-up tables among special function units, the proposed scheme reduces look-up table size by 54% and read power consumption by 75% for 8-core/4-bank configuration. However, the performance loss is less than 25% for various benchmark applications. As the number of cores increases for the future multi-core systems, the effects of area and power saving by the proposed schemes increase, but the performance loss is reduced.