Decimal Hardware Multiplier

Abstract

IEEE-754 2008 has extended the standard with decimal floating point arithmetic. Human-centric applications, like financial and commercial, depend on decimal arithmetic since the results must match exactly those obtained by human calculations without being subject to errors caused by decimal to binary conversions. Decimal Multiplication is a fundamental operation utilized in many algorithms and it is referred in the standard IEEE-754 2008. Decimal multiplication has an inherent difficulty associated with the representation of decimal numbers using a binary number system. Both bit and digit carries, as well as invalid results, must be considered in decimal multiplication in order to produce the correct result. This article focuses on algorithms for hardware implementation of decimal multiplication. Both decimal fixed-point and floating-point multiplication are described, including iterative and parallel solutions.