Advanced Arithmetic For The Digital Computer

Advanced Arithmetic for the Digital Computer

The number one requirement for computer arithmetic has always been speed. It is the main force that drives the technology. With increased speed larger problems can be attempted. To gain speed, advanced processors and pro gramming languages offer, for instance, compound arithmetic operations like matmul and dotproduct. But there is another side to the computational coin - the accuracy and reliability of the computed result. Progress on this side is very important, if not essential. Compound arithmetic operations, for instance, should always deliver a correct result. The user should not be obliged to perform an error analysis every time a compound arithmetic operation, implemented by the hardware manufacturer or in the programming language, is employed. This treatise deals with computer arithmetic in a more general sense than usual. Advanced computer arithmetic extends the accuracy of the elementary floating-point operations, for instance, as defined by the IEEE arithmetic standard, to all operations in the usual product spaces of computation: the complex numbers, the real and complex intervals, and the real and complex vectors and matrices and their interval counterparts. The implementation of advanced computer arithmetic by fast hardware is examined in this book. Arithmetic units for its elementary components are described. It is shown that the requirements for speed and for reliability do not conflict with each other. Advanced computer arithmetic is superior to other arithmetic with respect to accuracy, costs, and speed.

Advanced Arithmetic for the Digital Computer

Advanced Computer Arithmetic Design

Innovative techniques and cutting-edge research in computer arithmetic design Computer arithmetic is a fundamental discipline that drives many modern digital technologies. High-performance VLSI implementations of 3-D graphics, encryption, streaming digital audio and video, and signal processing all require fast and efficient computer arithmetic algorithms. The demand for these fast implementations has led to a wealth of new research in innovative techniques and designs. Advanced Computer Arithmetic Design is the result of ten years of effort at Stanford University under the Sub-Nanosecond Arithmetic Processor (SNAP) project, which author Michael Flynn directs. Written with computer designers and researchers in mind, this volume focuses on design, rather than on other aspects of computer arithmetic such as number systems, representation, or precision. Each chapter begins with a review of conventional design approaches, analyzes the possibilities for improvement, and presents new research that advances the state of the art. The authors present new data in these vital areas: ? Addition and the Ling adder ? Improvements to floating-point addition ? Encoding to reduce execution times for multiplication ? The effects of technology scaling on multiplication ? Techniques for floating-point division ? Approximation techniques for high-level functions such as square root, logarithms, and trigonometric functions ? Assessing cost performance of arithmetic units ? Clocking to increase computer operation frequency ? New implementation of continued fractions to the approximation of functions This volume presents the results of a decade's research in innovative and progressive design techniques. Covering all the most important research topics in the field, Advanced Computer Arithmetic Design is the most up-to-date and comprehensive treatment of new research currently available.