Composition of decimal floating point data
AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsShawn D. Lundvall, Eric M. Schwarz, Ronald M. Smith, Sr., Phil C. Yeh
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A decimal floating point finite number in a decimal floating point format is composed from the number in a different format. A decimal floating point format includes fields to hold information relating to the sign, exponent and significand of the decimal floating point finite number. Other decimal floating point data, including infinities and NaNs (not a number), are also composed. Decimal floating point data are also decomposed from the decimal floating point format to a different format.
Claims14
A method of executing a machine instruction by a central processing unit, said method comprising:
- obtaining a machine instruction for execution, the machine instruction comprising an opcode and being defined for computer execution according to a computer architecture;
- and
- executing the machine instruction, the executing comprising:
- obtaining, by at least one processor of a processing environment, a significand of a datum in a first format and an exponent of the datum in a second format;
- converting the significand in the first format to the significand in a decimal floating point format;
- converting the exponent in the second format to a biased exponent;
- and combining the significand in the decimal floating point format and the biased exponent to create the datum in the decimal floating point format.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.