Tininess detection

A data processing method comprising:

• performing a floating-point operation with rounding to generate a floating-point result value;
• and
• detecting a tininess status indicating whether an outcome of the floating-point operation with rounding is tiny, where a tiny outcome corresponds to a non-zero number with a magnitude smaller than a minimum non-zero magnitude representable as a normal floating-point number in a floating-point format to be used for the floating-point result value;
• in which:
• the tininess status is detected using tininess detection circuitry comprising hardware circuit logic configured to support both before rounding tininess detection and after rounding tininess detection for detecting the tininess status, the method further comprising:
• selecting, based on a software-programmable control parameter, whether to detect the tininess status according to the before rounding tininess detection or the after rounding tininess detection.

An apparatus comprising:

• floating-point processing circuitry to perform a floating-point operation with injection rounding to generate an injection-rounded significand for a floating-point result value;
• and
• tininess detection circuitry to detect a tininess status indicating whether an outcome of the floating-point operation with injection rounding is tiny, where a tiny outcome corresponds to a non-zero number with a magnitude smaller than a minimum non-zero magnitude representable as a normal floating-point number in a floating-point format to be used for the floating-point result value;
• in which:
• the tininess detection circuitry is configured to detect the tininess status based on the injection-rounded significand generated by the floating-point processing circuitry.