Radix-64 Floating-Point Division and Square Root: Iterative and Pipelined Units

Digit-recurrence algorithms are widely used in actual microprocessors to compute floating-point division and square root. These iterative algorithms present a good trade-off in terms of performance, area and power. Traditionally, commercial processors have iterative division and square root units where the iteration logic is used over several cycles. The main drawbacks of these iterative units are long latency and low throughput due to the reuse of part of the logic over several cycles, and its hardware complexity with separated logic for division and square root. We present a radix-64 floating-point division and square root algorithm with a common iteration for division and square root and where, to have an affordable implementation, each radix-64 iteration is made of two simpler radix-8 iterations. The radix-64 algorithm allows to get low-latency operations, and the common division and square root radix-64 iteration results in some area reduction. The algorithm is mapped into two different microarchitectures: a low-latency and low area iterative unit, and a low-latency and high-throughput pipelined unit. In both units speculation between consecutive radix-8 iterations is used to reduce the timing.