Floating point unit for multiple data architectures

A floating point unit for supporting a first floating point architecture and a second floating point architecture, the first and second floating point architectures each having at least one format, the unit comprising:

• an internal floating point format compatible with both the first and second floating point architectures, and sharing the fraction bits and sign bit with both of the floating point architectures;
• a first converter to convert an operand of the first floating point architecture type to the internal floating point format by multiplexing the exponent bits of the operand, and to convert an operand of the second floating point architecture type to the internal floating point format by multiplexing the exponent bits of the operand;
• a floating point unit having an internal data-flow for the internal floating point format that supports the converted data of both the first and second floating point architectures, and that performs floating point operations on data formatted in the internal floating point format by the first converter;
• and
• a second converter to convert data of the internal floating point format into data of the transformed first floating point architecture by multiplexing the exponent bits of the operand, and to convert data of the internal floating point format into data of the transformed second floating point architecture by multiplexing the exponent bits of the operand.

A method for processing data corresponding to a plurality of floating point architectures, comprising:

• determining the instant floating point architecture;
• converting the exponent of the data corresponding to the determined architecture into an internal floating point format by:
• correcting the radix point location of the exponent data, and
• pre-aligning the corrected exponent data;
• performing arithmetic computations on the converted data;
• re-converting the exponent of the computed data by:
• re-correcting the radix point location of the exponent of the computed data, and
• post-aligning the re-corrected exponent of the computed data;
• and
• outputting the re-converted data to thereby provide floating point data corresponding to the original floating point architecture without incurring a delay beyond that required to compute the resulting output in the internal floating point format.