ABSTRACT
In the history of computer arithmetic, the unified arithmetic schemes have been playing an important role in the progress of this field. Especially, the unification becomes important for power- and area-efficient designs in the resource-limited handheld systems. Although the handheld three-dimensional (3D) graphics require various vector and elementary function computations, previous works on low-power arithmetic for handheld graphics processing units (GPUs) were based on separated vector and elementary function units. This chapter provides an overview of the 3D computer graphics for handheld systems and introduces arithmetic schemes proposed to reduce power and area overheads of the handheld 3D GPUs, which require various arithmetic operations. It presents the philosophy of unified arithmetic. By exploiting the logarithmic arithmetic, the fixed point hybrid number system (FXP-HNS) is newly proposed for power- and area-efficient unification and single-cycle throughput implementation of all supported operations.
