A 588-Gb/s LDPC Decoder Based on Finite-Alphabet Message Passing
[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text] Abstract:
An ultrahigh throughput low-density parity check (LDPC) decoder with an unrolled full-parallel architecture is proposed, which achieves the highest decoding throughput compared to previously reported LDPC decoders in the literature. The decoder benefits from a serial message-transfer approach between the decoding stages to alleviate the well-known routing congestion problem in parallel LDPC decoders. Furthermore, a finite-alphabet message passing algorithm is employed to replace the VN update rule of the standard min-sum (MS) decoder with lookup tables, which are designed in a way that maximizes the mutual information between decoding messages. The proposed algorithm results in an architecture with reduced bit-width messages, leading to a significantly higher decoding throughput and to a lower area compared to an MS decoder when serial message transfer is used. The architecture is placed and routed for the standard MS reference decoder and for the proposed finite-alphabet decoder using a custom pseudohierarchical backend design strategy to further alleviate routing congestions and to handle the large design. Post layout results show that the finite-alphabet decoder with the serial message transfer architecture achieves a throughput as large as 588 Gb/s with an area of 16.2 mm2 and dissipates an average power of 22.7 pJ per decoded bit in a 28-nm fully depleted silicon on isulator library. Compared to the reference MS decoder, this corresponds to 3.1 times smaller area and 2 times better energy efficiency.
