MOD-9™ ALU
The Mod-9™ ALU is the world’s first general purpose residue processor! Never has the true power of residue arithmetic been unleashed until now! The Mod-9™ is a breakthrough versus traditional methods of residue number processing. An exciting new world of machine computation has arrived!
A Modular Computation processor
The Mod-9™ ALU is a unique co-processor which off-loads arithmetic calculations from a binary host CPU and performs these calculations using the residue number system, thereby accelerating overall arithmetic performance. Since residue numbers do not require carry from digit to digit, many arithmetic operations execute faster, despite the resolution or numeric range of the values under calculation. This allows the Mod-9™ processor to target operations on wide data, or to represent very accurate fractional values.
Of special merit of the Mod-9™ ALU is its ability to operate on fractional data formats, derived directly from the properties of the residue number system. The Mod-9™ supports a new fractional data representation which inherently represents significantly more unique ratios, like the exact value of 1/3 or the value 32/17! However, high speed conversion instructions allow easy conversion of data between the Mod-9™ and binary and floating-point formats.
One advantage of the Mod-9™ ALU is performing highly accurate matrix multiplication and other matrix operations. Moreover, any problem involving significant amounts of product summations can benefit from the high accuracy and efficiency of the Mod-9™, such as convolutional neural network applications and image processing. High accuracy is also a feature of the Mod-9™, providing high precision processing of Mandelbrot fractals, for example.
On the most significant breakthroughs of the Mod-9™ is the ability to perform calculations entirely in residue format thereby only needing to convert the result to binary or floating point when complete. This is a brand-new development. These features make the Mod-9™ a breakthrough versus traditional known methods of residue number arithmetic. The new residue arithmetic is therefore renamed “Modular Computation” to differentiate it from prior art residue arithmetic.
Tools for Implementation
The Mod-9™ ALU has been developed as an IP core compatible with the Intel Nios® II CPU. Using Intel’s Platform Designer system integration tool within the Intel Quartus® prime software it is a simple matter to connect and integrate the Mod-9 into a Nios® II based design. Once you’ve added your Mod-9™ core to your NIOS-II project, you can program the Mod-9™ using special CPU instructions that access all of the Mod-9™ capabilities.
The Mod-9™ core currently targets the Cyclone-IV series of Intel FPGA devices and may be scaled to perform calculations in a broad range of applications and industries. Available for download are pre-built implementations for the popular DE2-115 development board from Terasic.com. (Note: Intel Nios-II processor can only be operated in development mode for this download)
The “Mod-9A” is the designation for this initial release of our first-generation design. The Mod-9A currently targets the Cyclone-IV and Stratix-IV FPGA device families. MaiTRIX is actively upgrading the Mod-9™ to a second-generation IP core which will additionally target Arria-10, Cyclone-10 and Stratix 10 generation FPGA devices.
The Mod-9™ is great for universities and research institutions! The Mod-9 provides hands on experience with actual hardware for modular computation. This allows research and graduate students to develop new and unique modular algorithms and apply these as solutions to the problems of tomorrow. Easily develop original work and test new hypothesis with this new platform! Many new applications are possible for the future, including new work in applications such as AI, DSP and quantum arithmetic.
A Standard Processor Environment
The Mod-9™ ALU is easy to program and takes advantage of the Intel Nios® II Software Build Tools for Eclipse. This rich development environment provides a wide variety of pre-made templates for programming advanced C and C++ applications and provides advanced debugging and monitor features making your development a snap!
The Nios® II processor is a highly flexible soft CPU that when combined with a Mod-9™ ALU creates the world’s first hybrid arithmetic processing system. Using Intel’s Software Build Tools for Eclipse provides a professional, free to use development environment of un-precedented power!
MaiTRIX Mod-9™ Downloads
Get your Mod-9™ IP core!
Download demo applications for the Mod-9
* MOD-9™ is a trademark of MaiTRIX, LLC.
* Intel, Nios, Quartus, Cyclone, Arria and Stratix are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation.
Our source code library comprises fundamental research and is published compliant to Section §734.7, §734.8 & §734.10 of the U.S. EAR export rules and is therefore available for public dissemination. However, the download and use of Maitrix technology does not provide a commercial license, please contact MaiTRIX for a license allowing commercial use. Commercial use of Maitrix technology includes the use of the source technology to develop RNS based ALU and CPU technology.