A 75-variable MIQP solver processor for real-time autonomous robot control

Abstract

This paper describes a low-power eight-core Mixed Integer Quadric Programming (MIQP) solver processor VLSI for real-time autonomous robot control. It features an eight-core architecture with operation-level and task-level parallel processing using speculative execution to solve a 75-variable MIQP problem within 100 ms. The VLSI, containing 12.2 M transistors and occupying 2.7 × 3.0 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> area, was designed and fabricated using 40-nm CMOS technology. It consumes 568 mW with 135 MHz operation, allowing real-time, low-power capability for a 75-variable MIQP solver.