50 Years of CORDIC: Algorithms, Architectures, and Applications

• Published in: IEEE transactions on circuits and systems. I, Regular papers Vol. 56; no. 9; pp. 1893 - 1907
• Main Authors: Meher, P.K., Valls, J., Tso-Bing Juang, Sridharan, K., Maharatna, K.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.09.2009; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Algorithms; Application software; Arithmetic circuits; Communication systems; Computation; Computer architecture; CORDIC; CORDIC algorithms; digital signal processing chip; Eigenvalues; Eigenvalues and eigenfunctions; Graphics; Image processing; Inventions; Lifting equipment; Linear systems; Mathematical analysis; Mathematical models; Robot kinematics; Signal processing; Singular value decomposition; VLSI
• ISSN: 1549-8328; 1558-0806
• DOI: 10.1109/TCSI.2009.2025803

Year 2009 marks the completion of 50 years of the invention of CORDIC (coordinate rotation digital computer) by Jack E. Volder. The beauty of CORDIC lies in the fact that by simple shift-add operations, it can perform several computing tasks such as the calculation of trigonometric, hyperbolic and logarithmic functions, real and complex multiplications, division, square-root, solution of linear systems, eigenvalue estimation, singular value decomposition, QR factorization and many others. As a consequence, CORDIC has been utilized for applications in diverse areas such as signal and image processing, communication systems, robotics and 3-D graphics apart from general scientific and technical computation. In this article, we present a brief overview of the key developments in the CORDIC algorithms and architectures along with their potential and upcoming applications.