How can I speed up my math operations in VHDL?

Question

I have some calculations going on currently at rising edge of a 75MHz pixel clock to output 720p video on screen. Some of the math (like a few modulo) take too long (20+ns whereas 75MHz is 13.3ns) so my timing constraints are not met. I'm new to FPGAs but I'm wondering if for example there is a way to run the calculations at a faster speed than the current pixel clock in order to have them completed by the next tick of the 75MHz clock. I'm using VHDL by the way.

Answer 1

75 MHz is already quite slow by today's FPGA standards.

The problem is the modulo operation, which effectively involves division; and division is slow.

Think carefully about the operations you need, and if there is any way to reorganise the computation. If you are clocking pixels it's not as if you have 32-bit integers to deal with; restricted values are easier to deal with.

Martin hinted at one option: strength reduction. If you have 1280 pixels/line and need to operate on every third one, you don't need to compute 1280 mod 3! Count 0,1,2,0,... instead.

Another, if you need modulo-3 of an 8-bit (or 12-bit) number is to store all possible values in a lookup table, which will be fast enough.

Or sometimes you can multiply by 1/3 (X"5555") instead of dividing by 3, then multiply by 3 (which is a single addition) and subtract to get the modulo. This pipelines really well, but since X"5555" is only an approximation to 1/3 you need to verify in simulation that it delivers the correct output for every input. (for 16-bit inputs, this isn't a big simulation!) The extension to modulo 9 is easy.

EDIT:

Two points from your comments : Another option you have is to create a X2 clock (150MHz) using the Spartan's clock generators, which gives you 2 cycles per pixel. Well pipelined code should meet 150 MHz without much trouble.

How not to pipeline!

PROCESS(Clk)
BEGIN
    if(rising_edge(Clk)) then
        for i in 0 to 2 loop
            case i is
                when 0 => temp1 <= a*data;
                when 1 => temp2 <= temp1*b;
                when 2 => result <= temp2*c;
                when others => null;
            end case;
        end loop;
    end if;
END PROCESS;

The first thing to realise is that the loop and case statement cancel each other out, so this simplifies to

PROCESS(Clk)
BEGIN
    if rising_edge(Clk) then
        temp1 <= a*data;
        temp2 <= temp1*b;
        result <= temp2*c;
    end if;
END PROCESS;

which is buggy! The testbench also being buggy, hides the problem.

In cycle 1, Data,a,b,c are presented, and temp1 = Data*a is computed.
In cycle 2, temp1 is multiplied by a NEW value of b instead of the correct one!
Same again in cycle 3!

Since the testbench sets the inputs and leaves them constant, it won't catch the problem!

PROCESS(Clk)
BEGIN
    if rising_edge(Clk) then
        -- cycle 1
        temp1   <= a*data;
        b_copy  <= b;
        c_copy1 <= c;
        -- cycle 2
        temp2   <= temp1*b_copy;
        c_copy2 <= c_copy1;
        -- cycle 3
        result  <= temp2*c_copy2;
    end if;
END PROCESS;

I like to comment each cycle; every term I use in a cycle must come from the immediately preceding cycle, either by calculation or from a copy.

At least this works, but it could be reduced to 2 cycles depth and fewer copy registers because in this example, the four inputs are independent (and I am assuming there are no measures required to avoid overflow). So:

PROCESS(Clk)
BEGIN
    if rising_edge(Clk) then
        -- cycle 1
        temp1   <= a * data;
        temp2   <= b * c;
        -- cycle 2
        result  <= temp1 * temp2;
    end if;
END PROCESS;