Optimizing correctly-rounded reciprocal square roots for embedded VLIW cores

Claude-Pierre Jeannerod (1, 2) , Guillaume Revy (1, 2)

1 ARENAIRE - Computer arithmetic
2 LIP - Laboratoire de l'Informatique du Parallélisme

This paper presents an optimized software implementation of the reciprocal square root function, for IEEE binary32 floating-point data and with correct rounding to nearest. The main feature of this implementation is high instruction level parallelism (ILP) exposure, which results here from an extension of the polynomial evaluation-based method of~\cite{JeKnMoRe08} as well as from the design of a specific rounding procedure. This implementation proves to be very efficient for some VLIW processor cores like STMicroelectronics' ST231 (used mainly for embedded media processing), where a low latency of 29 cycles has been measured.

Mots clés: Reciprocal square root; Binary floating-point arithmetic; Correct rounding; Polynomial evaluation; Software implementation; VLIW processor core

Domaines: Arithmétique des ordinateurs

Claude-Pierre Jeannerod, Guillaume Revy. Optimizing correctly-rounded reciprocal square roots for embedded VLIW cores. Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, Nov 2009, United States. ⟨ensl-00391185v2⟩