Accelerating a C Function with User Logic

After reading the information given by both of you, I also read over the custom instruction manual and then implemented a simple custom instruction as a test. It's only a simple combinatorial instruction that handles addition and bit shifting but took almost half the clock cycles that my original implementation did. I was surprised that it was so straightforward! I'm going to try to see how much of a performance increase I can achieve with custom instructions for now and will then look into custom components since I think the criteria given by both of you may be applicable.

Ted, I would ideally like to do as you suggested since a non-software based component would be superior to the implementation I have now. However I'm not sure I could take on such a task with my current skill set. It's definitely something I will try in the future though.

Thank you for all the advice and putting up with my questions. This part of the forum is definitely more active than the UP part.