Instruction to normalize redundantly encoded floating point numbers

摘要

The present invention is an apparatus to normalize a floating point number. The apparatus has a first storage area comprising the floating point number. The floating point number comprises an exponent field and an explicit bit. The apparatus further comprises a circuit to normalize the floating point number when the explicit bit is not set and the exponent field has a first predetermined value identifying a redundant denormal encoding of the floating point number. Otherwise the encoding of the number is not changed by the circuit.