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This work suggests a multi-threading processor architecture for a wireless LAN MAC protocol controller. By adopting a multi-threading technique, not only can overall throughput be increased but also context switching time can be eliminated. In the wireless communication environment, wherein tiny events must be handled simultaneously, the multi-threading architecture can be effective. The proposed architecture is designed to be simple so that its design complexity is not significantly increased compared with conventional embedded processors. Thus, it can be used as a MAC layer controller, targeting mobile wireless LAN products.

In this paper, we present the FP-AU (Floating Point Arithmetic Unit) that improves the performance of multimedia processing with low hardware cost. The hardware cost was minimized by designing a 32-bit single precision architecture that can execute 64-bit double precision operations with very low hardware overhead, such as a barrel shifter and control logics. Since the FP-AU occupies a significant amount of silicon area in a microprocessor due to double precision data, our proposed architecture shows a very efficient performance/cost ratio. The sticky bit generation logic offers a simple architecture that can reduce hardware cost. The FP-AU was modeled in Verilog HDL and synthesized with 0.35 /spl mu/m standard cell libraries after verification. The occupied area is about 6,590 equivalent gates. It operates at 130 MHz clock speed under worst-case conditions.

As an indispensable part of modern consumer electronics, security applications such as smart cards and network securities play an important role. In fact, data security gets ever-increasing attention as people tend to communicate with each other by various electronic devices over networks. In this paper, a new approach on designing a finite field multiplier architecture is proposed. The proposed architecture trades reduction in the number of clock cycles with resources. This architecture features high performance, simple structure, scalability and independence on the choice of the finite field to provide maximum security to applications so that it can be applied to various fields of security-demanding consumer electronic applications.