Efficient floating point overflow and underflow detection system
US5553015A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Apr 15, 1994 |
| Grant date | Sep 3, 1996 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Apr 15, 2014 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06F7/4991
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A processing system that determines whether an underflow or overflow condition has occurred concurrently with the determination of the floating point exponent result uses a group of latched constants which can be added to the intermediate exponent and the exponent adjust to determine out of range conditions for all cases. The appropriate one of these latched constants (exponent range check values; exp.sub.-- range.sub.-- chk) are added to the exp.sub.-- int and exp.sub.-- adjust to give a value that will vary based on whether the exp.sub.-- result is out of range, or not. Different exp.sub.-- range.sub.-- chk values are used for underflow single precision, underflow double precision, overflow single precision and overflow double precision. The sum of these three values (exp.sub.-- int, exp.sub.-- adj, exp.sub.-- range.sub.-- chk) will yield a binary number having a most significant bit (MSB) that is dependent upon the exp.sub.-- result value. More particularly, the MSB will be a logical 1 when an out of range condition has occurred and a logical 0 for normal in range exponent results.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.