A cordic-based processor extension for scalar and vector processing

Trigonometric calculations play a significant role in scientific and multimedia applications. Such applications usually use vectors of data, thus it is essential to use SIMD-based computing for them. State of the art processors such as Pentium family processors have SIMD capabilities, MMX, SSE and SSE2 to name a few. But these extensions usually come short of performing trigonometric functions calculation. This paper presents a CORDIC-based vector processor extension to accelerate trigonometric calculations. The suggested architecture works with a vector of data, as well as scalar data. This architecture has been synthesized both for FPGA and ASIC and the results have shown a significant improvement in throughput over conventional processors.