Patent · US Expired

Reservation station including addressable constant store for a floating point processing unit

US5761105A · kind A · utility

25Cited by
26References
13Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateMay 13, 1997
Grant dateJun 2, 1998
Priority date
Expiry dateMay 13, 2017

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06F2207/382
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A reservation station with an addressable constant store enables the provision of floating point constants to arithmetic units in a floating point unit of a superscalar processor. Floating point constant identifiers supplied with floating point instructions index into the addressable store and addressed constant are provided in an internal, extended-precision format which provides extra precision and/or range when compared with formats available external to the floating point unit. In this way, full internal, extended-precision constants can be provided for use in microcoded floating point instruction sequences. Additionally, internal extended-precision floating point constants may be rounded in accordance with a prevailing rounding mode and format to provide external format floating point constant values for use in implementing load constant instructions.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.