A 64-bit decimal floating-point adder

Due to rapid growth in financial, commercial, and Internet-based applications, there is an increasing desire to allow computers to operate on both binary and decimal floating-point numbers. Consequently, specifications for decimal floating-point support are being added to the IEEE-754 Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a decimal floating-point adder that is compliant with the current draft revision of this standard. The adder supports operations on 64-bit (16-digit) decimal floating-point operands. We provide synthesis results indicating the estimated area and delay for our design when it is pipelined to various depths.