Decimal multiplication using compact BCD multiplier

Abstract

Decimal multiplication is an integral part of financial, commercial, and internet-based computations. The basic building block of a decimal multiplier is a single digit multiplier. It accepts two Binary Coded Decimal (BCD) inputs and gives a product in the range [0, 81] represented by two BCD digits. A novel design for single digit decimal multiplication that reduces the critical path delay and area is proposed in this research. Out of the possible 256 combinations for the 8-bit input, only hundred combinations are valid BCD inputs. In the hundred valid combinations only four combinations require 4 × 4 multiplication, 64 combinations need 3 × 3 multiplication, and the remaining 32 combinations use either 3 × 4 or 4 × 3 multiplication. The proposed design makes use of this property. This design leads to more regular VLSI implementation, and does not require special registers for storing easy multiples. This is a fully parallel multiplier utilizing only combinational logic, and is extended to a Hex/Decimal multiplier that gives either a decimal output or a binary output. The accumulation of partial products generated using single digit multipliers is done by an array of multi-operand BCD adders for an (n-digit × n-digit) multiplication.