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. 17, 1996
Filed:
Sep. 30, 1994
Kenneth A Dockser, San Jose, CA (US);
VLSI Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA (US);
Abstract
An arithmetic logic unit provides for zero-result prediction so as to eliminate the latency between successive operations (e.g., multiplication and division) when a zero detection is a condition for performance of the second operation. Instead of performing zero detection on the result, zero prediction is performed on the initial or intermediate operands, (e.g., partial products that are summed to generate a product). To this end, zero-prediction logic determines whether or not both of the following conditions are met: 1) either the least significant bits of the addends are the same and the carry-in is zero or the least significant bits of the addends are different and the carry-in is one. 2) for each pair of adjacent bit positions, the four included bits are consistent with addend complementarity. If both conditions are met, a zero result is predicted; otherwise, a non-zero result is predicted.