Mullet - a parallel multiplier generator

A module generator called Mullet for producing near-optimal parallel multipliers in a technology independent manner is presented. Using this tool, a large number of candidate designs can be generated in order to find combinations of primitive elements which produce the best multiplier. The process of multiplication is broken down into a partial product generator (PPG) and a partial product summer (PPS). Both of these tasks can be done in a number of different ways and the best solution depends on the size of the required multiplier as well as the technology used. Mullet can be combined with a searching algorithm to find the best multiplier based on some objective. It can generate high quality multipliers for irregular architectures such as FPGAs and use features such as the dedicated multipliers. The tool can also be used to explore tradeoffs between architectures and to calibrate timing models of the primitive components. Synthesized examples using Xilinx FPGA devices are comparisons are made with those produced by the Xilinx CoreGenerator and XST tools.