Instantiate a module based on a condition in Verilog - verilog

Question

I have a 1023 bit vector in Verilog. All I want to do is check if the ith bit is 1 and if it is 1 , I have to add 'i' to another variable .
In C , it would be something like :
int sum=0;
int i=0;
for(i=0;i<1023;i++) {
if(a[i]==1) {
sum=sum+i;
}
Of course , the addition that I am doing is over a Galois Field . So, I have a module called Galois_Field_Adder to do the computation .
So, my question now is how do I conditionally check if a specific bit is 1 and if so call my module to do that specific addition .
NOTE: The 1023 bit vector is declared as an input .

Answer 1

It's hard to answer your question without seeing your module, as we can't gage where you are in your Verilog. You always have to think of how your code translates in gates. If we want to translate your C code into synthesizable logic, we can take the same algorithm, go through each bit one after the other, and add to the sum depending on each bit. You would use something like this:
module gallois (
input wire clk,
input wire rst,
input wire [1022:0] a,
input wire a_valid,
output reg [18:0] sum,
output reg sum_valid
);
reg [9:0] cnt;
reg [1021:0] shift_a;
always #(posedge clk)
if (rst)
begin
sum[18:0] <= {19{1'bx}};
sum_valid <= 1'b0;
cnt[9:0] <= 10'd0;
shift_a[1021:0] <= {1022{1'bx}};
end
else
if (a_valid)
begin
sum[18:0] <= 19'd0;
sum_valid <= 1'b0;
cnt[9:0] <= 10'd1;
shift_a[1021:0] <= a[1022:1];
end
else if (cnt[9:0])
begin
if (cnt[9:0] == 10'd1022)
begin
sum_valid <= 1'b1;
cnt[9:0] <= 10'd0;
end
else
cnt[9:0] <= cnt[9:0] + 10'd1;
if (shift_a[0])
sum[18:0] <= sum[18:0] + cnt[9:0];
shift_a[1021:0] <= {1'bx, shift_a[1021:1]};
end
endmodule
You will get your result after 1023 clock cycles. This code needs to be modified depending on what goes around it, what interface you want etc...
Of importance here is that we use a shift register to test each bit, so that the logic adding your sum only takes shift_a[0], sum and cnt as an input.
Code based on the following would also work in simulation:
if (a[cnt[9:0])
sum[18:0] <= sum[18:0] + cnt[9:0];
but the logic adding to sum would in effect take all 1023 bits of a[] as an input. This would be quite hard to turn into actual lookup tables.
In simulation, you can also implement something very crude such as this:
reg [1022:0]a;
reg [9:0] sum;
integer i;
always #(a)
begin
sum[9:0] = 10'd0;
for (i=0; i < 1023; i=i+1)
if (a[i])
sum[9:0] = sum[9:0] + i;
end
If you were to try to synthesize this, sum would actually turn into a chunk of combinatorial logic, as the 'always' block doesn't rely on a clock. This code is in fact equivalent to this:
always #(a)
case(a):
1023'd0: sum[18:0] = 19'd0;
1023'd1: sum[18:0] = 19'd1;
1023'd2: sum[18:0] = 19'd3;
etc...
Needless to say that a lookup table with 1023 input bits is a VERY big memory...
Then if you want to improve your code, and use your FPGA as an FPGA and not like a CPU, you need to start thinking about parallelism, for instance working in parallel on different ranges of your input a. But this is another thread...