Patent ID: 8214416

Claim:
A machine-implemented method for generating a normalized floating-point sum from at least first and second floating-point addends, wherein each addend comprises a mantissa and an exponent, and the normalized floating-point sum comprises a mantissa and an exponent, the method comprising: (a) a mantissa generator generating the mantissa of the normalized floating-point sum based on the first and second floating-point addends; (b) an exponent generator generating a plurality of possible values for the exponent of the normalized floating-point sum based on a common exponent value; and (c) an exponent selector selecting one of the possible values to generate the exponent of the normalized floating-point sum, wherein: step (a) comprises: (a1) generating an unnormalized mantissa sum based on the first and second floating-point addends; (a2) generating a left-most significant digit (LSD) pointer indicating location of the LSD within the unnormalized mantissa sum; (a3) normalizing the unnormalized mantissa sum based on the LSD pointer to generate the mantissa of the normalized floating-point sum; and step (c) comprises selecting the exponent of the normalized floating-point sum based on the LSD pointer.