FPGA-Based Architecture for Computing Testors

Irreducible testors (also named typical testors) are a useful tool for feature selection in supervised classification problems with mixed incomplete data. However, the complexity of computing all irreducible testors of a training matrix has an exponential growth with respect to the number of columns in the matrix. For this reason different approaches like heuristic algorithms, parallel and distributed processing, have been developed. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a custom architecture for BT algorithm, which allows computing testors from a given input matrix. The architectural design is based on a parallel approach that is suitable for high populated input matrixes. The architecture has been designed to deal with parallel processing of all matrix rows, automatic candidate generation, and can be configured for any size of matrix. The architecture is able to evaluate whether a feature subset is a testor of the matrix and to calculate the next candidate to be evaluated, in a single clock cycle. The architecture has been implemented on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) device. Results show that it provides significant performance improvements over a previously reported hardware implementation. Implementation results are presented and discussed.