View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Repositorio Institucional Universidad de Málaga Floating Point Square Root under HUB Format Julio Villalba-Moreno Javier Hormigo Dept. of Computer Architecture Dept. of Computer Architecture University of Malaga University of Malaga Malaga, SPAIN Malaga, SPAIN
[email protected] [email protected] Abstract—Unit-Biased (HUB) is an emerging format based on maintaining the same accuracy, the area cost and delay of FIR shifting the representation line of the binary numbers by half filter implementations has been drastically reduced in [3], and unit in the last place. The HUB format is specially relevant similarly for the QR decomposition in [4]. for computers where rounding to nearest is required because it is performed simply by truncation. From a hardware point In [5] the authors carry out an analysis of using HUB format of view, the circuits implementing this representation save both for floating point adders, multipliers and converters from a area and time since rounding does not involve any carry propa- quantitative point of view. Experimental studies demonstrate gation. Designs to perform the four basic operations have been that HUB format keeps the same accuracy as conventional proposed under HUB format recently. Nevertheless, the square format for the aforementioned units, simultaneously improving root operation has not been confronted yet. In this paper we present an architecture to carry out the square root operation area, speed and power consumption (14% speed-up, 38% less under HUB format for floating point numbers. The results of area and 26% less power for single precision floating point this work keep supporting the fact that the HUB representation adder, 17% speed-up, 22% less area and slightly less power for involves simpler hardware than its conventional counterpart for the floating point multiplier).