Data computation circuit and method

A method of operating a circuit, the method comprising:

• receiving a signed mantissa and exponent of each data element of a plurality of input data elements and a plurality of weight data elements;
• generating a plurality of two's complement products by performing multiplication and reformatting operations on some or all of the signed mantissas of the plurality of input data elements and some or all of the signed mantissas of the plurality of weight data elements;
• generating a plurality of sums by adding each exponent of the plurality of input data elements to each exponent of the plurality of weight data elements;
• shifting each product of the plurality of products by an amount equal to a difference between a corresponding sum of the plurality of sums and a maximum sum;
• and
• summing the plurality of shifted products to generate a mantissa sum.

A compute-in-memory (CIM) circuit comprising:

• a memory array configured to store a plurality of input data elements and a plurality of weight data elements;
• a multiply-accumulate (MAC) unit configured to generate a sequence of partial sums based on the plurality of input data elements and the plurality of weight data elements;
• an adder configured to generate a sequence of accumulated sums by adding each partial sum of the sequence of partial sums to a stored accumulated sum;
• and
• a buffer configured to
• store each accumulated sum of the sequence of accumulated sums as the stored accumulated sum,
• output each stored accumulated sum to the adder, and
• output a final stored accumulated sum from the CIM circuit.