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A comparison of floating point and logarithmic number systems for FPGAs.

Conference ·
OSTI ID:950936
There have been many papers proposing the use of logarithmic numbers (LNS) as an alternative to floating point because of simpler multiplication, division and exponentiation computations. However, this advantage comes at the cost of complicated, inexact addition and subtraction, as well as the need to convert between the formats. In this work, we created a parameterized LNS library of computational units and compared them to an existing floating point library. Specifically, we considered multiplication, division, addition, subtraction, and format conversion to determine when one format should be used over the other and when it is advantageous to change formats during a calculation.
Research Organization:
Sandia National Laboratories
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
AC04-94AL85000
OSTI ID:
950936
Report Number(s):
SAND2005-0971C
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English