Patent · US Active

High speed and low power circuit structure for barrel shifter

US9021000B2 · kind B2 · utility

2Cited by
6References
10Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventor

Key dates

Filing dateJun 29, 2012
Grant dateApr 28, 2015
Priority date
Expiry dateMay 9, 2033

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06F5/015
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A barrel shifter uses a sign magnitude to 2's complement converter to generate decoder signals for its cascaded multiplexer selectors. The sign input receives the shift direction and the magnitude input receives the shift amount. The sign magnitude to 2's complement converter computes an output result as a 2's complement of the shift amount using the shift direction as a sign input, assigns a first portion (most significant bit half) of the output result to a first decoder signal, and assigns a second portion (least significant bit half) of the output result to a second decoder signal. This encoding scheme allows the decoder circuits to be relatively simple, for example, 3-to-8 decoders for an implementation adapted to shift a 64-bit operand value rather than the 4-to-9 decoder required in a conventional barrel shifter, leading to faster operation, less area, and reduced power consumption.

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