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:
Nov. 24, 1998
Filed:
Sep. 20, 1996
Roland Albert Bechade, South Burlington, VT (US);
Robert Hayosh, Austin, TX (US);
Stephen Gerard Shuma, South Burlington, VT (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
In connection with a logic circuit including a mask generator for determining a value for a so-called 'sticky bit' in a binary number to be truncated and rounded, an intermediate signal is taken from the mask generator and an Exclusive-OR function applied to adjacent bits to generate a second mask containing or adjacent to a transition between the portion of the number to be dropped and the portion to be retained in the truncated number. The second mask is applied to different overlapping groups of bits in a portion of the number which contains the least significant bit and the guard bit as determined from the number of bits to be dropped, for example, by shifting out from a shifter, as the number is truncated and rounded to extract a specific bit in each group of bits. By extracting such specific bits using a mask, the extraction process is removed from the critical path of the processor which includes the shifter and the extraction process can proceed in parallel with the shifting process.