A Programmable and Configurable ASIC to Generate Piecewise-Affine Functions Defined Over General Partitions

Abstract

This paper presents a programmable and configurable architecture and its inclusion in an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) to generate Piecewise-Affine (PWA) functions. A Generic PWA form (PWAG) has been selected for integration, because of its suitability to implement any PWA function without resorting to approximation. The design of the ASIC in a 90 nm TSMC technology, its integration, test and characterization through different examples are detailed in the paper. Furthermore, the ASIC verification using an ASIC-in-the-loop methodology for embedded control applications is presented. To assess the characteristics of this verification, the double-integrator, a usual control application example has been considered. Experimental results validate the proposed architecture and the ASIC implementation.