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ARITH
2003
IEEE

Decimal Floating-Point: Algorism for Computers

13 years 9 months ago
Decimal Floating-Point: Algorism for Computers
Decimal arithmetic is the norm in human calculations, and human-centric applications must use a decimal floating-point arithmetic to achieve the same results. Initial benchmarks indicate that some applications spend 50% to 90% of their time in decimal processing, because software decimal arithmetic suffers a 100× to 1000× performance penalty over hardware. The need for decimal floating-point in hardware is urgent. Existing designs, however, either fail to conform to modern standards or are incompatible with the established rules of decimal arithmetic. This paper introduces a new approach to decimal floating-point which not only provides the strict results which are necessary for commercial applications but also meets the constraints and requirements of the IEEE 854 standard. A hardware implementation of this arithmetic is in development, and it is expected that this will significantly accelerate a wide variety of applications.
Michael F. Cowlishaw
Added 04 Jul 2010
Updated 04 Jul 2010
Type Conference
Year 2003
Where ARITH
Authors Michael F. Cowlishaw
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