Apparatus and method for coherent, accelerated conversion between data representations

A method comprising:

• fetching source tensor blocks of a source tensor data structure, each source tensor block comprising a plurality of source tensor data elements having a first numeric representation, wherein the source tensor data structure comprises a predefined structural arrangement of source tensor blocks;
• converting the one or more source tensor blocks into one or more destination tensor blocks comprising a plurality of destination tensor data elements having a second numeric representation different from the first numeric representation, wherein the sets of one or more source tensor blocks are converted to one or more corresponding destination tensor blocks in a specified order based on the first and second numeric representations;
• and
• storing each individual destination tensor block in a designated memory region to maintain coherency with the predefined structural arrangement of the source tensor blocks.

A non-transitory machine-readable medium having program code stored thereon which, when executed by a machine, causes the machine to perform the operations of:

• fetching source tensor blocks of a source tensor data structure, each source tensor block comprising a plurality of source tensor data elements having a first numeric representation, wherein the source tensor data structure comprises a predefined structural arrangement of source tensor blocks;
• converting the one or more source tensor blocks into one or more destination tensor blocks comprising a plurality of destination tensor data elements having a second numeric representation different from the first numeric representation, wherein the sets of one or more source tensor blocks are converted to one or more corresponding destination tensor blocks in a specified order based on the first and second numeric representations;
• and
• storing each individual destination tensor block in a designated memory region to maintain coherency with the predefined structural arrangement of the source tensor blocks.