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From: McGuire@solbourne.com (Jim McGuire)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: IBM floating point using logarithms
Message-ID: <1991Jun10.171824.10980@solbourne.com>
Date: 10 Jun 91 17:18:24 GMT
Sender: McGuire@solbourne.com (Jim McGuire)
Organization: Solbourne Computer, Inc., Longmont, CO
Lines: 27


In the "Technology" section, EE Times, June 3, page 29
there is an article discussing a floating point coprocessor
design done at IBM's Watson research center. Some quotes:

	"The Hybrid Number Execution Unit uses a
	time-honored computational aid - logarithms -
	to amplify the performance of basic operations"

	"The key to the hybrid computational unit
	is a new approach to representing logarithms
	that closely parallels the IEEE P754 32-bit
	floating-point format."

	"The result is a conversion method simple enough
	to cast in hardware..."

	"Computer simulations indicate that multiplication,
	division, squaring, and square root can all be
	performed by the coprocessor in 10 nanoseconds."

After all the discussion we've had lately over floating
point, I expected some discussion of this.  So does
anyone have comments?
-- 
Jim McGuire, Solbourne Computer			Speaking for
mcguire@solbourne.com				myself only!