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:
Oct. 26, 1999
Filed:
Oct. 17, 1997
Curtis Abbott, Menlo Park, CA (US);
Malleable Technologies, Inc., San Jose, CA (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus that combines the same basic hardware elements in several ways to perform a plurality of arithmetic operations over different numbers of operands of different lengths. The allowed options include the multiplication and summing of several operands in a single operation. The reuse of hardware elements is obtained by the use of a multiplication hardware structure together with multiplexer logic (or similar selection logic) at appropriate points in the hardware structure, which allows a minimum of extra hardware and a small number of extra gate delays along any critical path, thereby ensuring that the flexibility to use different operand lengths and numbers of operands incurs only a small penalty in processing speed and/or chip area in a VLSI circuit implementation.