Multiplications of floating point expansions
Marc Daumas · 2003
In modern computers, the floating point unit is the part of the processor delivering the highest computing power and getting most attention from the design team. Performance of any multiple precision application will be dramatically enhanced by adequate use of floating point expansions. We present three multiplication algorithms, faster and more integrated than the stepwise algorithm proposed earlier. We have tested these novel algorithms on an application that computes the determinant of a matrix. In the absence of overflow or underflow, the process is error free and possibly more efficient than its integer based counterpart.