Title :
A Dual-Core Coprocessor with Native 4D Clifford Algebra Support
Author :
Franchini, Silvia ; Gentile, Antonio ; Vassallo, Giorgio ; Sorbello, Filippo ; Vitabile, Salvatore
Author_Institution :
DICGIM Dept., CSAI Lab. (Comput. Sci. & Artificial Intell. Lab.), Univ. of Palermo, Palermo, Italy
Abstract :
Geometric or Clifford Algebra (CA) is a powerful mathematical tool that is attracting a growing attention in many research fields such as computer graphics, computer vision, robotics and medical imaging for its natural and intuitive way to represent geometric objects and their transformations. This paper introduces the architecture of CliffordCoreDuo, an embedded dual-core coprocessor that offers direct hardware support to four-dimensional (4D) Clifford algebra operations. A prototype implementation on an FPGA board is detailed. Experimental results show a 1.6x average speedup of CliffordCoreDuo in comparison with the baseline mono-core architecture. A potential cycle speedup of about 40x over Gaigen 2, a geometric algebra software library generator for general-purpose processors, is also demonstrated.
Keywords :
algebra; coprocessors; field programmable gate arrays; 4D Clifford algebra operations; CliffordCoreDuo architecture; FPGA board; baseline mono-core architecture; computer graphics; computer vision; embedded dual-core coprocessor; four-dimensional Clifford algebra operations; general-purpose processors; geometric algebra software library generator; geometric objects; medical imaging; native 4D Clifford algebra support; robotics; Algebra; Cache memory; Clocks; Computer architecture; Coprocessors; Field programmable gate arrays; Random access memory; Clifford algebra; FPGA prototyping; embedded coprocessors; medical imaging; multi-core architectures;
Conference_Titel :
Digital System Design (DSD), 2012 15th Euromicro Conference on
Conference_Location :
Izmir
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4673-2498-4
