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, 1998
Filed:
Aug. 06, 1996
Samuel D Naffziger, Fort Collins, CO (US);
Rodolfo G Beraha, Los Altos, CA (US);
Hewlett-Packard Co., Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
Method and apparatus for bounding alignment shifts to enable at-speed denormalized result generation in an FMAC (fused multiply accumulate unit; also known as a multiply-add-fused floating-point unit, or MAF/FPU). The method and apparatus force a one into an FMAC's (leading bit anticipator) at a point which is determined to yield proper alignment of a potential denormalized result (denorm result). The precise location of the forced one is determined through a comparison of the FMAC's operand exponents. If the FMAC result is indeed a denorm, the shifter will only shift up to the position of the forced one, thereby leaving the exponent at zero and producing an FMAC result with a denormalized mantissa.