Patent · US Expired

Methods and apparatus for compiling a transcendental floating-point operation

US7080364B2 · kind B2 · utility

6Cited by
4References
28Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateApr 28, 2003
Grant dateJul 18, 2006
Priority date
Expiry dateJul 17, 2024

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06F7/556
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

Methods and an apparatus for compiling a transcendental floating-point operation are disclosed. The disclosed techniques compile a transcendental floating-point operation by replacing the transcendental floating-point operation with an integer-based routine (e.g., a single routine) hand-coded to perform the transcendental floating-point operation. Each of the instructions in the integer-based routine, including the integer operations, is compiled directly into opcodes without primitive floating-point emulation calls. As a result, function nesting is reduced and more efficient algorithms are used. The disclosed system does not simply emulate basic floating-point operations using integer operations. Instead, portions of the computation are isolated where fixed-point accuracy is sufficient and thus native integer computations can be used. For example, computing (log(1+Z)−Z)/Z instead of computing log(1+Z).

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