COMPUTING DEVICE PERFORMANCE OF LOW PRECISION ARITHMETIC FUNCTIONS WITH ARRAYS OF PRE-CALCULATED VALUES

摘要

Reduced precision computer number formats inherently limit the quantity of discrete numeric values that can be represented. Therefore, the solution values of an arithmetic function, for each numeric value that is individually and uniquely expressible utilizing such a reduced precision computer number format, can be precomputed since the quantity of unique solution values can be limited to a quantity that can be conveniently stored, such as in an array. Subsequently, rather than computing the solution value of such an arithmetic function, for a given input value, the precomputed array can be referenced and a solution value corresponding to the given input value can be read from the array. Reading numeric values from an array can be substantially faster than computing solution values of a computationally-expensive arithmetic function.