149 8-bit (E4M3) Floating Point Multiplier
149 : 8-bit (E4M3) Floating Point Multiplier
- Author: Clive Chan
- Description: 8-bit (E4M3) Floating Point Multiplier
- GitHub repository
- Clock: 0 Hz
How it works
A small mux in front to fill up two 8-bit buffers in halves, which feed the actual 8-bit multiplier. When ctrl0 is 0, you can clock in 4 bits from data[3:0] into the upper or lower halves of two buffers according to the values of ctrl[1] and ctrl[2]: - 00 STORE 1 LOWER - 01 STORE 1 UPPER - 10 STORE 2 LOWER - 11 STORE 2 UPPER The clock is intended for manual use instead of actually being driven by a clock, but it probably can work. The 8 bits in each of the two buffers are interpreted as an 8-bit floating point number. From MSB to LSB: - sign bit - exponent[3:0] - mantissa[2:0] These are interpreted according to an approximation of IEEE 754, i.e. (-1)sign * 2(exponent - EXP_BIAS) * 1.mantissa with the following implementation details / differences: - EXP_BIAS = 7, analogous to 2**(exp-1) - 1 for all IEEE-defined formats - Denormals (i.e. exponent == 0) are flushed to zero on input and output - exponent = 0b1111 is interpreted as more normal numbers instead of NaN/inf, and overflows saturate to the largest representable number (0bx1111111 = +/- 480.0)
- Negative zero is interpreted as NaN instead. - Round to nearest even is implemented. The output 8 bits will always display the results of the multiplication of the two FP8's in the buffers, regardless of the clock. The module has been verified over all possible pairs of 8-bit inputs.
How to test
cd src && make
IO
| # | Input | Output |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | clock | sign |
| 1 | ctrl0 | exponent |
| 2 | ctrl1 | exponent |
| 3 | ctrl2 | exponent |
| 4 | data0 | exponent |
| 5 | data1 | mantissa |
| 6 | data2 | mantissa |
| 7 | data3 | mantissa |