The Role of Distributed Arithmetic in FPGA-based Signal Processing (11/96)

Distributed Arithmetic, along with Modulo Arithmetic, are computation algorithms that perform multiplication with look-up table based schemes. Both stirred some interest over two decades ago but have languished ever since. Indeed, DA specifically targets the sum of products (sometimes referred to as the vector dot product) computation that covers many of the important DSP filtering and frequency transforming functions. Ironically, many DSP designers have never heard of this algorithm. Inspired by the potential of the Xilinx FPGA look-up table architecture, the DA algorithm was resurrected in the early 90’s and shown to produce very efficient filter designs [1].