Floating point multiplier with first and second partial product shifting circuitry for result alignment

摘要

A floating point multiplier includes a data path in which a plurality of partial products are calculated and then reduced to a first partial product and a second partial product. Shift amount determining circuitry 100 analyzes the exponents of the input operands A and B as well as counting the leading zeros in the fractional portions of these operands to determine an amount of left shift or right shift to be applied by shifting circuitry 200, 202 within the multiplier data path. This shift amount is applied so as to align the partial products so that when they are added they will produce the result C without requiring this to be further shifted. Furthermore, shifting the partial products to the correct alignment in this way in advance of adding these partial products permits injection rounding combined with the adding of the partial products to be employed for cases including subnormal values.