Unary positional computing

This paper introduces a novel representation that is a hybrid of unary and positional systems. It builds upon unary computation, a recent evolution in the field of stochastic computing. In contrast to the stochastic approach, the unary approach is completely accurate, with no random fluctuations. It requires less area and has much lower latency. However, compared to a conventional binary approach, the latency is still unacceptably high for many applications. The unary positional system proposed in this paper reduces the latency exponentially, with only a modest increase in the hardware complexity. Constructs for arithmetic operations such as addition and multiplication are presented and their performance is evaluated.