Invention Grant
- Patent Title: Floating-point multiply-add with down-conversion
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Application No.: US15092401Application Date: 2016-04-06
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Publication No.: US10282169B2Publication Date: 2019-05-07
- Inventor: Liang-Kai Wang , Terence M. Potter , Andrew M. Havlir , Yu Sun , Nicolas X. Pena , Xiao-Long Wu , Christopher A. Burns
- Applicant: Apple Inc.
- Applicant Address: US CA Cupertino
- Assignee: Apple Inc.
- Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
- Current Assignee Address: US CA Cupertino
- Agency: Meyertons, Hood, Kivlin, Kowert & Goetzel, P.C.
- Main IPC: G06F7/483
- IPC: G06F7/483 ; G06F7/544

Abstract:
Techniques are disclosed relating to floating-point operations with down-conversion. In some embodiments, a floating-point unit is configured to perform fused multiply-addition operations based on first and second different instruction types. In some embodiments, the first instruction type specifies result in the first floating-point format and the second instruction type specifies fused multiply addition of input operands in the first floating-point format to generate a result in a second, lower-precision floating-point format. For example, the first format may be a 32-bit format and the second format may be a 16-bit format. In some embodiments, the floating-point unit includes rounding circuitry, exponent circuitry, and/or increment circuitry configured to generate signals for the second instruction type in the same pipeline stage as for the first instruction type. In some embodiments, disclosed techniques may reduce the number of pipeline stages included in the floating-point circuitry.
Public/Granted literature
- US20170293470A1 Floating-Point Multiply-Add with Down-Conversion Public/Granted day:2017-10-12
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