Determining shared exponent values for shared exponent floating point data types

A hardware accelerator comprising:

• a first circuit configured to determine a shared global exponent value for a plurality of floating point numbers;
• a second circuit configured to determine a sub exponent value from a plurality of candidate sub exponent values that minimizes a quantization error value determined based on a subset of the plurality of floating point numbers and a version of the subset of the plurality of floating point numbers quantized based on the shared global exponent and the sub exponent value, wherein the determined sub exponent value is shared among the subset of the plurality of floating point numbers;
• and
• a third circuit configured to, based on the sub exponent value, represent the subset of the plurality of floating point numbers using a shared exponent floating point data type,
• wherein representing, based on the sub exponent value, the subset of the plurality of floating point numbers using the shared exponent floating point data type results in higher numerical fidelity of the subset of the plurality of floating point numbers.

A non-transitory machine-readable medium storing a program executable by at least one processing unit of a device, the program comprising sets of instructions for:

• determining a shared global exponent value for a plurality of floating point numbers;
• determining a sub exponent value from a plurality of candidate sub exponent values that minimizes a quantization error value determined based on a subset of the plurality of floating point numbers and a version of the subset of the plurality of floating point numbers quantized based on the shared global exponent and the sub exponent value, wherein the determined sub exponent value is shared among the subset of the plurality of floating point numbers;
• and
• based on the sub exponent value, representing the subset of the plurality of floating point numbers using a shared exponent floating point data type,
• wherein representing, based on the sub exponent value, the subset of the plurality of floating point numbers using the shared exponent floating point data type results in higher numerical fidelity of the subset of the plurality of floating point numbers.