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:
Jan. 25, 2000
Filed:
Mar. 13, 1998
Gilbert M Wolrich, Framingham, MA (US);
Mark D Matson, Acton, MA (US);
John D Clouser, Pepperell, MA (US);
Digital Equipment Corporation, Maynard, MA (US);
Abstract
If the exponents of a floating-point-processor addition pipeline's input operands are equal, a signal (INVERT) that determines whether the pipeline's sole full-width carry-propagate mantissa adder (34) will invert one of its inputs results from an inversion-determination circuit (FIG. 11) that determines whether the sole set bit in a decoded normalization-shift signal (NORM.sub.-- SHIFT) occupies the same position as a set bit in a signal (FRAC.sub.-- A.sub.-- GT.sub.-- B) representing what the possible normalization amounts will be if a first of the mantissas is greater than the other, second mantissa. Consequently, a bit-comparison operation (56) that employs no full-width carry-propagate addition can determine the amount of normalization shifting to be performed by bit shifters (30 and 32) disposed in respective processing trains that generate mantissa inputs to the mantissa adder (34).