Question

I need to design a circuit which accepts n numbers at the input (infinite input) and calculates the average of these numbers as the output. The numbers for the input can only be of values <0,15>.
I need to implement this circuit in VHDL but I cannot find the proper algorithm since I need it to design the logical schema. I understand that I will definitely need a 4bit adder and some registers to store the values. I tried to understand the problem using moving average principle but it just did not work at all.

Answer 1

For input n+1, with value x, the average will be equal to (average*n+x)/(n+1) –> … = average + (next - average)/(n+1).
From this observation a simple algorithm can be derived:

1. Initialize all registers to 0
2. Get the next input and store it in temp register
3. Increase count register by 1
4. Subtract previous average from temp register
5. Divide the temp register by count
6. Add temp to average
7. Go to step 2