The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 26, 1992
Filed:
Apr. 03, 1991
Robert A Drehmel, Goodhue, MN (US);
Scott A Hilker, Rochester, MN (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
An apparatus and method for determining the difference between two exponents of two floating point numbers is disclosed. The exponent of each number is split into two portions. A high portion contains the most significant bits and a low portion contains the least significant bits. The number of bits in the low portion is related to the number of bits in the fraction portion of each floating point number. To determine differences that require a shift in one of the exponenets, one of the differences between the low portions of the exponents is selected based upon which of several conditions are found with respect to the difference between the high portion. Advantageously, a set of adders which are as wide as the number of bits in the low portion of each exponent are used.