Apple Inc.
Circuitry for Floating-point Power Function

Abstract:

Techniques are disclosed relating to floating-point circuitry configured to perform a corner check instruction for a floating-point power operation. In some embodiments, the power operation is performed by executing multiple instructions, including one or more instructions specify to generate an initial power result of a first input raised to the power of a second input as 2.sup.(second input*log.sup.2.sup.(first input)). In some embodiments, the corner check instruction operates on the first and second inputs and outputs output a corrected power result based on detection of a corner condition for the first and second inputs. Corner check circuitry may share circuits with other datapaths. In various embodiments, the disclosed techniques may reduce code size and power consumption for the power operation.