Enable Lightweight and Precision-Scalable Posit/IEEE-754 Arithmetic in RISC-V Cores for Transprecision Computing

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Li, Qiong, Fang, Chao, Huang, Longwei, Lin, Jun, Wang, Zhongfeng
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Li, Qiong
Fang, Chao
Huang, Longwei
Lin, Jun
Wang, Zhongfeng
author_facet Li, Qiong
Fang, Chao
Huang, Longwei
Lin, Jun
Wang, Zhongfeng
contents While posit format offers superior dynamic range and accuracy for transprecision computing, its adoption in RISC-V processors is hindered by the lack of a unified solution for lightweight, precision-scalable, and IEEE-754 arithmetic compatible hardware implementation. To address these challenges, we enhance RISC-V processors by 1) integrating dedicated posit codecs into the original FPU for lightweight implementation, 2) incorporating multi/mixed-precision support with dynamic exponent size for precision-scalability, and 3) reusing and customizing ISA extensions for IEEE-754 compatible posit operations. Our comprehensive evaluation spans the modified FPU, RISC-V core, and SoC levels. It demonstrates that our implementation achieves 47.9% LUTs and 57.4% FFs reduction compared to state-of-the-art posit-enabled RISC-V processors, while achieving up to 2.54$\times$ throughput improvement in various GEMM kernels.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_19096
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Enable Lightweight and Precision-Scalable Posit/IEEE-754 Arithmetic in RISC-V Cores for Transprecision Computing
Li, Qiong
Fang, Chao
Huang, Longwei
Lin, Jun
Wang, Zhongfeng
Hardware Architecture
Artificial Intelligence
While posit format offers superior dynamic range and accuracy for transprecision computing, its adoption in RISC-V processors is hindered by the lack of a unified solution for lightweight, precision-scalable, and IEEE-754 arithmetic compatible hardware implementation. To address these challenges, we enhance RISC-V processors by 1) integrating dedicated posit codecs into the original FPU for lightweight implementation, 2) incorporating multi/mixed-precision support with dynamic exponent size for precision-scalability, and 3) reusing and customizing ISA extensions for IEEE-754 compatible posit operations. Our comprehensive evaluation spans the modified FPU, RISC-V core, and SoC levels. It demonstrates that our implementation achieves 47.9% LUTs and 57.4% FFs reduction compared to state-of-the-art posit-enabled RISC-V processors, while achieving up to 2.54$\times$ throughput improvement in various GEMM kernels.
title Enable Lightweight and Precision-Scalable Posit/IEEE-754 Arithmetic in RISC-V Cores for Transprecision Computing
topic Hardware Architecture
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.19096