Patent ID: 8650231

Claim:
A method of configuring a programmable device to perform floating point operations on input values formatted in accordance with an input standard requiring a first mantissa size and a first exponent size, said method comprising: configuring logic of said programmable device to reformat said input values to have an initial mantissa size different from said first mantissa size; configuring logic of said programmable device to perform a tree of successive operations to compute a final result, wherein: each respective operation in a first level of said tree of successive operations has a first number of said reformatted input values as inputs and provides a respective first intermediate result having a mantissa size increased by at least one bit left of its binal point as compared to said initial mantissa size; each operation in a respective successive level of said tree of successive operations after said first level of said tree of successive operations, other than a final level, has said first number of inputs and provides a respective intermediate result and said final level provides said final result, and each of said respective intermediate results and said final result is unnormalized and has a mantissa size increased by at least one bit left of its binal point as compared to an intermediate result on an immediately preceding level; and configuring logic of said programmable device to reformat said final result in accordance with an output standard.