The format conversion operations between a floating-point number and an integer number and a round operation are the important standard floating-point operations. In most cases, these operations are implemented by adding additional hardware to the floating-point adder. The SR (simultaneous rounding) method, one of the techniques used to improve the performance of the floating-point adder, can perform addition and rounding operations at the same stage and is an efficient method with respect to the silicon area and its performance. In this paper, a hardware model to execute CRops (conversion and rounding operations) for the SR floating-point adder is presented and CRops are analyzed on the proposed hardware model. Implementation details are also discussed. The proposed scheme can maintain the advantages of the SR method and can perform each CRop with three pipeline stages.

A 32-bit motor-drive-specific microcontroller chip was newly designed, implemented using a 0.8 µm double-metal CMOS process, and its feasibility was successfully tested by applying the fabricated microcontroller chip to a real AC induction motor drive system. The microcontroller chip includes a single-precision floating-point unit, peripheral devices for motor drive, and a memory controller as well as the SPARC V7 CPU. The pipeline scheme and the two-step multiplication method were used in the multiplier of floating-point unit for the best area and speed trade-off, using the standard cell library available for the design. The chip size is 12.7 12.8 mm2, the number of transistors is around 562,000, and the power consumption is 1.69 W at the supply voltage of 5 V and the clock frequency of 30 MHz. Both a standard cell library and a full-custom layout were used in the implementation.