Tutorial: Floating-point arithmetic on FPGAs
By Geir Kjosavik, Xilinx
December 13, 2006 -- dspdesignline.com
This article explains the basics of floating-point arithmetic, how floating-point units (FPUs) work, and how to use FPGAs for easy, low-cost floating-point processing.
Inside microprocessors, numbers are represented as integers—one or several bytes stringed together. A four-byte value comprising 32 bits can hold a relatively large range of numbers: 232, to be specific. The 32 bits can represent the numbers 0 to 4,294,967,295 or, alternatively, -2,147,483,648 to +2,147,483,647. A 32-bit processor is architected such that basic arithmetic operations on 32-bit integer numbers can be completed in just a few clock cycles, and with some performance overhead a 32-bit CPU can also support operations on 64-bit numbers. The largest value that can be represented by 64 bits is really astronomical: 18,446,744,073,709,551,615. In fact, if a Pentium processor could count 64-bit values at a frequency of 2.4 GHz, it would take it 243 years to count from zero to the maximum 64-bit integer.
December 13, 2006 -- dspdesignline.com
This article explains the basics of floating-point arithmetic, how floating-point units (FPUs) work, and how to use FPGAs for easy, low-cost floating-point processing.
Inside microprocessors, numbers are represented as integers—one or several bytes stringed together. A four-byte value comprising 32 bits can hold a relatively large range of numbers: 232, to be specific. The 32 bits can represent the numbers 0 to 4,294,967,295 or, alternatively, -2,147,483,648 to +2,147,483,647. A 32-bit processor is architected such that basic arithmetic operations on 32-bit integer numbers can be completed in just a few clock cycles, and with some performance overhead a 32-bit CPU can also support operations on 64-bit numbers. The largest value that can be represented by 64 bits is really astronomical: 18,446,744,073,709,551,615. In fact, if a Pentium processor could count 64-bit values at a frequency of 2.4 GHz, it would take it 243 years to count from zero to the maximum 64-bit integer.
To read the full article, click here
Related Semiconductor IP
- Peripheral Sensor Interface (PSI5) Host Controller
- Link Acceleration Unit
- 64-bit, RISC-V, ultra-high performance processors
- 64-bit, RISC-V, performance and data computation processors
- 32-bit, RISC-V, deeply embedded processors
Related Articles
- Floating- to fixed-point MATLAB algorithm conversion for FPGAs
- Implementing LTE on FPGAs
- Using an interface wrapper module to simplify implementing PCIe on FPGAs
- Timing Closure on FPGAs
Latest Articles
- Croc: Training the Next Generation Chip Designers on Domain-Specific End-to-End Open Source Silicon
- Design and Development of a Neuromorphic Silicon Suite: PVT Sensing, Stochastic LIF Inference, On-Chip STDP Learning, and Crossbar Programming
- LLM4RTL: Tool-Assisted LLM for RTL Generation
- Towards Delta Aware Training: Efficient DNN Weight Storage for Resource-Constrained FPGAs
- CHERI-D: Secure and efficient inline object ID for CHERI temporal memory safety