The Design Chronicles Blogs

Do you have a clever way to accelerate Montgomery modular multiplication? That would be your challenge as an entrant in the Global Tensilica Design Contest. Abstracts are due September 16.

The aim of the contest, hosted by the Cadence Academic Network and the Cadence Tensilica team, is to foster the spirit of inventiveness and the realization of ideas among the engineering student community. So if you're an undergraduate or graduate student at a university that belongs to the Tensilica University Program, then you're encouraged submit an abstract.

Tensilica processors can be customized to efficiently execute compute-intensive algorithms such as those for Montgomery multiplication. As part of the contest, you'll design new Xtensa operations in the Tensilica Instruction Extension (TIE) language and tool flow. The operations should accelerate Montgomery multiplication for a wide range of modulus bit-widths. You'll also need to write efficient C functions to implement modular multiplication and exponentiation using those operations and data types. Get more details about the design contest requirements.

The winning team (to be announced in March 2017) will receive a fully paid trip to participate and present at a local CDNLive developer conference in 2017. Team members will receive an Apple Watch and the guide will receive an Apple MacBook Air. Review more important contest details, and get your submission ready!

Now, the prizes sound great....but aren't you excited about the prospect of sharing your discoveries with the engineering community?