RESULT NORMALIZATION MECHANISM AND METHOD OF OPERATION

摘要

PURPOSE: To provide a result normalization mechanism which generates a mask for showing the position of '1' at the head in an adder result in two stages and which is used together with an adder. CONSTITUTION: In the first stage, a head '0' prediction mechanism decides the position in two digits. In the second stage, a head '0' count indicator decides the position to a single digit. The number of digits by which the respective stages of a multiplexer array shift the adder result is controlled by using the mask. Thus, '1' at the head is contained in the output of the multiplexer array. The result normalization mechanism can effectively be used in a high performance application field in a floating point execution unit in a data processor and in a digital signal processing system.