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:
Apr. 23, 2013
Filed:
May. 29, 2008
Martin Stanley Schmookler, Austin, TX (US);
Martin Stanley Schmookler, Austin, TX (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A mechanism for executing fixed point divide operations using a floating point multiply-add pipeline are provided. With the mechanism, the floating point execution unit in a processor is modified to include elements that may be used to perform fixed point divide operations. These additional elements include a leading zero counter, a leading one counter, an estimate table unit, and a state machine. The fixed point divide operands are converted to a floating point format and an estimate of the reciprocal of the divisor is generated using estimate tables. These values are used in multiple passes through the floating point unit for calculating estimates of the quotient and corresponding error values. The estimates of the quotient are based on previous estimates of the quotient in a prior pass through the floating point unit and a corresponding error value. The final quotient estimate is truncated.