arithmetic pipeline

Arithmetic pipelines are usually found in most of the computers. They are used for floating point operations, multiplication of fixed point numbers etc. For example: The input to the Floating Point Adder pipeline is:

X = A*2^a
Y = B*2^b

Here A and B are mantissas (significant digit of floating point numbers), while a and b are exponents.

The floating point addition and subtraction is done in 4 parts:

Compare the exponents.





Align the mantissas.





Add or subtract mantissas





Produce the result.

Registers are used for storing the intermediate results between the above operations.