The A2F is a fully synthesizable module implemented in Verilog RTL. It is a co-processor unit providing floating-point computation compliant with the ANSI/IEEE Std 754-1985, IEEE Standard for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic (IEEE Standard). It is designed to provide high performance floating-point computation while minimizing die size and power. Pipelined, single-cycle throughput operation is available for all operations except Divide, Remainder and Square Root operations.
The Multiply and Add/Subtract Pipes maybe optionally be replaced with a full Fused Multiply-Add Pipe that provides improved precision for complex operations.
The A2F implements most of the formats and operations specified in the IEEE 754 standard directly in its hardware pipelines. The following operations are not supported directly by the A2F, but can be supported with software support:
- Denormal numbers
- Underflow to denormal numbers
- Full NaN support
- BCD conversions
Control Register bits determine how the A2F treats denormals and NaN operands, and underflow conditions. In Fast Mode, input denormal operands are treated as equivalent to positive zero. When an arithmetic operation generates an underflow result, the A2F returns a zero instead (flush-to-zero mode). When an arithmetic instruction generates a NaN operand, the default NaN value is always generated. The A2F does not propagate the lower mantissa bits of NaNs. In Compliance Mode, the A2F will generate a software trap when it encounters a denormal input, generates an underflow value, or needs to generate a NaN result. This allows support software to complete the trapped operation in a way that is fully compliant with the IEEE standard.
