A family of modular area- and energy-efficient QRD-accelerator architectures

QR-decomposition accelerators are attractive SoC components for many applications with a wide range of specifications. A new family of highly area- and energy-efficient, modular two-way linear-array QRD architectures based on the Givens algorithm and CORDIC rotations is proposed. The template architecture allows for implementations of real-/complex-valued and integer/floating-point QRDs. An accurate algebraic cost model enables cross-level optimization over architecture, micro-architecture and circuit level using a rich set of parameters. Quantitative results for exemplary applications are presented for implementations in 40-nm CMOS, proving the significant improvement of efficiency.