Performing arithmetic operations using both large and small floating point values

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-8984041-B2
Application number	US-201213598847-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Aug 30, 2012
Priority date	Dec 13, 2011
Publication date	Mar 17, 2015
Grant date	Mar 17, 2015

Abstract

Mechanisms are provided for performing a floating point arithmetic operation in a data processing system. A plurality of floating point operands of the floating point arithmetic operation are received and bits in a mantissa of at least one floating point operand of the plurality of floating point operands are shifted. One or more bits of the mantissa that are shifted outside a range of bits of the mantissa of at least one floating point operand are stored and a vector value is generated based on the stored one or more bits of the mantissa that are shifted outside of the range of bits of the mantissa of the at least one floating point operand. A resultant value is generated for the floating point arithmetic operation based on the vector value and the plurality of floating point operands.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method, in a data processing system, for performing a floating point arithmetic operation, comprising:
receiving, in hardware logic of the data processing system, a plurality of floating point operands of the floating point arithmetic operation;
shifting, by the hardware logic, bits in a mantissa of at least one floating point operand of the plurality of floating point operands;
storing, by the hardware logic, one or more bits of the mantissa that are…

Assignees

• Carter John B
• Mealey Bruce G
• Rajamani Karthick
• Retter Eric E
• Stuecheli Jeffrey A
• IBM

Inventors

• Carter John B
• Mealey Bruce G
• Rajamani Karthick
• Retter Eric E
• Stuecheli Jeffrey A

Classifications

• G06F2207/382

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F7/483 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F5/012

  Physics · mapped topic