Design and Implementation of a Takum Arithmetic Hardware Codec

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Hunhold, Laslo
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Hunhold, Laslo
author_facet Hunhold, Laslo
contents The takum machine number format has been recently proposed as an enhancement over the posit number format, which is considered a promising alternative to the IEEE 754 floating-point standard. Takums retain the useful posit properties, but feature a novel exponent coding scheme that yields more precision for small and large magnitude numbers and a much higher and bounded dynamic range. This paper presents the design and implementation of a hardware codec for both takums (logarithmic number system, LNS) and linear takums (floating-point format). The codec design is emphasised, as it constitutes the primary distinguishing feature compared to logarithmic posits (LNS) and posits (floating-point format), which otherwise share similar internal representations. Furthermore, a novel internal representation for LNS is proposed. The presented takum codec, implemented in VHDL, demonstrates near-optimal scalability and performance on an FPGA. It achieves latency reductions of up to 38% and reduces LUT utilisation up to 50% compared to the best state-of-the-art posit codecs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_10594
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Design and Implementation of a Takum Arithmetic Hardware Codec
Hunhold, Laslo
Hardware Architecture
68M07
B.2.1; B.2.2
The takum machine number format has been recently proposed as an enhancement over the posit number format, which is considered a promising alternative to the IEEE 754 floating-point standard. Takums retain the useful posit properties, but feature a novel exponent coding scheme that yields more precision for small and large magnitude numbers and a much higher and bounded dynamic range. This paper presents the design and implementation of a hardware codec for both takums (logarithmic number system, LNS) and linear takums (floating-point format). The codec design is emphasised, as it constitutes the primary distinguishing feature compared to logarithmic posits (LNS) and posits (floating-point format), which otherwise share similar internal representations. Furthermore, a novel internal representation for LNS is proposed. The presented takum codec, implemented in VHDL, demonstrates near-optimal scalability and performance on an FPGA. It achieves latency reductions of up to 38% and reduces LUT utilisation up to 50% compared to the best state-of-the-art posit codecs.
title Design and Implementation of a Takum Arithmetic Hardware Codec
topic Hardware Architecture
68M07
B.2.1; B.2.2
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10594