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:
Dec. 13, 1994
Filed:
Jan. 04, 1993
David R Bearden, Austin, TX (US);
Raymond L Vargas, Austin, TX (US);
Motorola, Inc., Schaumburg, IL (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus for performing prenormalization during execution by an execution unit (100) of a floating-point add/subtract operation using two data operands. The execution unit (100) adds a mantissa portion of a first and a second floating-point data operand to generate a prenormalized mantissa sum. The execution unit (100) minimizes critical path delays to allow high-performance floating-point calculations while simultaneously reducing logic. Instead of treating the prenormalized mantissa sum as a 64-bit value with special treatment in case of a carry out due to overflow, the floating-point adder 100 treats the prenormalized mantissa sum as a 65-bit value, with the most significant bit being a carry output. Instead of conditionally incrementing an initial exponent value, the initial exponent value is always incremented. Thus, allowing the floating-point adder unit 100 to perform the exponent adjustments for normalization and for rounding faster.