Second-generation RISC floating point with multiply-add fused

A 440000-transistor second-generation RISC (reduced instruction set computer) floating-point chip is described. The pipeline latency is only two cycles, and a double-precision result is produced every cycle. System throughput and accuracy are increased by using a floating-point multiply-add-fused unit, which carries out a double-precision accumulate as a two-cycle pipelined execution with only one rounding error. While the cycle time (40 ns) is competitive with other CMOS RISC systems, the floating-point performance stretches to the range of bipolar RISC systems (7.4-13 MFLOPS LINPACK). Leading zero anticipation makes the two-cycle pipeline possible by nearly eliminating the additional postnormalization time, and it allows for reduced overall system latency. Partial decode shifters allow complete time sharing for the multiply and data alignment. Improved design techniques for logarithmic addition and higher order counters for multiplication complete this second-generation RISC floating-point unit design.<
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