Objective
The goal of this project is to design an integrated circuit chip which can perform the prime factorization of a given 8-bit number. We have used AMI 0.6 micron technology and Cadence toolset to develop this chip.
Motivation
The Prime Factorization Chip has been designed as a partial fulfillment for the course EE 103: Introduction to VLSI Design at.Tufts University. Prime factors are the basic building blocks of any positive integer. Any positive integer can be constructed by using a unique sequence of prime numbers. Prime factorization of a number is the process to find that unique sequence of prime numbers. Once we know the prime factors of two or more numbers we can quickly find their Greatest Common Divisor and Least Common Multiple.The basic motivation for the selection of this title is the underlying importance of prime factors of numbers. They are used in DSP, Image Processing and cryptography Algorithms. Many of today's cryptography algorithms rely on the prime numbers to create a key for encryption and these keys are normally very long strings of bits that make a up a large prime number. DSP and Image Processing algorithms use prime numbers as seeds to the algorithm. The faster you can calculate the prime factors of a number, better will be the performance of the algorithm.

Summary
We used somewhat brute force algorithm because it is simpler to implement in the hardware and it requires less area. Our algorithm takes an 8-bit input number X. The first operation we perform is division. Using a divider which is constructed using a full 8-bit subtractor we divide X by the numbers 2 through 255. For each division we store the result into X, and finally when X = 1 the algorithm terminates and we place all the prime factors in eight 8-bit registers to represent eight numbers that are the prime factors of the input.

The following table shows the basic parameters of the Prime Factorization Chip that we have designed and simulated.