FPGA Architectures from 'A' to 'Z' : Part 2

If you are new to FPGAs, there are a bewildering number of different architectures and related concepts; but fear not, because this tutorial explains all.

By Clive Maxfield
September 08, 2006

Editor's Note: This is Part 2 of an article that is abstracted from Chapter 4 of my book The Design Warrior's Guide to FPGAs, ISBN: 0750676043, with the kind permission of the publisher (See also Part 1).

Embedded multipliers, adders, MACs, etc.
Some functions like multipliers are inherently slow if they are implemented by connecting a large number of programmable logic blocks together. Since these functions are required by a lot of applications, many FPGAs incorporate special hard-wired multiplier blocks (Fig 11).

11. Bird's-eye view of chip with columns
of embedded multipliers and RAM blocks.

Similarly, some FPGAs offer dedicated adder blocks. One operation that is very common in DSP-type applications is called a multiply-and-accumulate. As its name would suggest, this function multiplies two numbers together and adds the result into a running total stored in an accumulator. Hence, it is commonly referred to as a MAC, which stands for Multiply, Add, and aCcumulate (Fig 12).

12. The core functions forming a MAC.

If the FPGA you are working with supplies only embedded multipliers, you would have to implement this function by combining the multiplier with an adder formed from a number of programmable logic blocks, while the result would be stored in some associated flip-flops, in a block RAM, or in a number of distributed RAMs. Life becomes a little easier if the FPGA also provides embedded adders, and some FPGAs provide entire MACs as embedded functions.

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