Logic is provided for performing decimal and binary floating point arithmetic calculations on first and second operands. The method includes: receiving the first and second operands in packed format; unpacking the first and second operands; swapping the first operand to a fourth operand and the second operand to a third operand, if an exponent of the first operand is less than an exponent of the second operand, otherwise storing the first operand to the third operand and the second operand to the fourth operand; aligning the third operand and the fourth operands based on the exponent difference of the third and fourth operand and a number of leading zeroes of the third operand; performing an add/subtract operation on the aligned third and fourth operands with normalizing and rounding between the operands; and packing the result obtained from the add/subtract.