Article View: comp.arch
Article #1842Re: hardware complex arithmetic support
From: Donald Lindsay
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1989 16:42
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1989 16:42
17 lines
1159 bytes
1159 bytes
In article <1672@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes: >Why hasn't anyone built a complex FPU? This seems like a reasonable >thing to do, in term of being common. Complex-arithmetic hardware is extremely common, actually. The most-used Fourier Transform algorithm involves complex arithmetic. So, FFT boxes have direct hardware support. The inner loop of the usual FFT involves something called a "butterfly", which is mostly just a complex multiplication. The high-end boxes have a pipelined butterfly unit, containing multiple floating point units. -- Don D.C.Lindsay Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science
Technical Details
Message-ID:
<5858@pt.cs.cmu.edu>Path:
arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!dptg!rutgers!iuvax!purdue!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!MATHOM.GANDALF.CS.CMU.EDU!lindsayReferences:
<kYtuglW00V4G01l=ZK@andrew.cmu.edu> <1672@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>Show Full Headers
Complete Article Headers
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!dptg!rutgers!iuvax!purdue!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!MATHOM.GANDALF.CS.CMU.EDU!lindsay From: lindsay@MATHOM.GANDALF.CS.CMU.EDU (Donald Lindsay) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: hardware complex arithmetic support Keywords: FFT complex arithmetic Message-ID: <5858@pt.cs.cmu.edu> Date: 15 Aug 89 16:42:10 GMT References: <kYtuglW00V4G01l=ZK@andrew.cmu.edu> <1672@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI Lines: 17