Design of a digit-slice on-line arithmetic unit

A gate level design of a digit-slice on-line arithmetic unit is presented. This unit is designed as a set of basic modules, Processing Elements (PE), each of which operates on a single digit of the operands and the results. It is capable of executing four basic operations of addition/subtraction, multiplication and division in an on-line manner. The results are generated during the digit-serial input of the operands, beginning always with the most significant digit. A general (with respect to radix) analysis of the cost and speed of the proposed unit is also given.