Advanced Micro Devices Corporation

Hanbing Liu

Vilas K Sridharan

Scott Hilker

Jay E Fleischman

Michael Estlick

Debjit Das Sarma

Erik D Swanson

Kelvin Domnic Goveas

John Kelley

Francisco Leonel Duran

David Oliver

Debjit DasSarma

Balatripura S Chavali

An exemplary computing device comprises an in-band processor and an out-of-band controller. The exemplary computing device also comprises a machine check architecture that includes a pipeline and a plurality of error detectors. The error detectors are configured to detect errors that occur in a plurality of circuits and report the errors to the in-band processor and the out-of-band controller via the pipeline. Various other devices, systems, and methods are also disclosed.

Devices, systems, and methods for out-of-band delivery of error reports

An exemplary system includes and/or represents an agent and a machine check architecture. In one example, the machine check architecture includes and/or represents at least one circuit configured to report errors via at least one reporting register. In this example, the machine check architecture also includes and/or represents at least one error-injection register configured to cause the circuit to inject at least one fabricated error report into the reporting register in response to a write operation performed by the agent on at least one bit of the error-injection register. Various other devices, systems, and methods are also disclosed.

Devices, systems, and methods for injecting fabricated errors into machine check architectures

Square root operations in a computer processor are disclosed. A first iteration for calculating partial results of a square root operation is performed in a larger number of cycles than remaining iterations. The first iteration requires calculation of a first digit that is larger than the subsequent digits. The first iteration thus requires multiplication of values that are larger than corresponding values for the subsequent other digits. By splitting the first digit into two parts, the required multiplications can be performed in less time than if the first digit were not split. Performing these multiplications in less time reduces the total delay for clock cycles associated with the first digit calculations, which increases the possible clock frequency allowed. A multiply-and-accumulate unit that performs either packed-single operations or double-precision operations may be used, along with a combined division/square root unit for simultaneous execution of division and square root operations.

Computer-based square root and division operations

The present application provides a method and apparatus for supporting denormal numbers in a floating point multiply-add unit (FMAC). One embodiment of the FMAC is configurable to add a product of first and second operands to a third operand. This embodiment of the FMAC is configurable to determine a minimum exponent shift for a sum of the product and the third operand by subtracting a minimum normal exponent from a product exponent of the product. This embodiment of the FMAC is also configurable to cause bits representing the sum to be left shifted by the minimum exponent shift if a third exponent of the third operand is less than or equal to the product exponent and the minimum exponent shift is less than or equal to a predicted left shift for the sum.

Floating point multiply-add unit with denormal number support

The disclosed embodiments relate to methods and apparatus for accurately, efficiently and quickly executing a fused multiply-and-accumulate instruction with respect to floating-point operands that have packed-single-precision format. The disclosed embodiments can speed up computation of a high-part of a result during a fused multiply-and-accumulate operation so that cycle delay can be reduced and so that power consumption can be reduced.

Methods and apparatus for compressing partial products during a fused multiply-and-accumulate (FMAC) operation on operands having a packed-single-precision format

Growing community of inventors

Austin, TX, United States of America

Hanbing Liu