Low-latency bit-accurate architecture for configurable precision floating-point division

Abstract

Floating-point division is indispensable and becoming increasingly important in many modern applications. To improve speed performance of floating-point division in actual microprocessors, this paper proposes a low-latency architecture with a multi-precision architecture for floating-point division which will meet the IEEE-754 standard. There are three parts in the floating-point division design: Pre-configuration, mantissa division, and quotient normalization. In the part of mantissa division, based on the fast division algorithm, a Predict-Correct algorithm is employed which brings about more partial quotient bits per cycle without consuming too much circuit area. Detailed analysis is presented to support the guaranteed accuracy per cycle with no restriction to specific parameters. In the synthesis using TSMC, 90 nm standard cell library, the results show that the proposed architecture has ≈63.6% latency, ≈30.23% total time (latency × period), ≈31.8% total energy (power × latency × period), and ≈44.6% efficient average energy (power × latency × period/efficient length) overhead over the latest floating-point division structure. In terms of latency, the proposed division architecture is much faster than several classic processors.