Patents by Inventor Brian John Hickmann

Brian John Hickmann has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 8577952
    Abstract: A combined binary/decimal fixed-point multiplier that uses BCD-4221 recoding for the decimal digits. This allows the use of binary carry-save hardware to perform decimal addition with a small correction. The described designs provide an improved reduction tree organization to reduce the area and delay of the multiplier and improved reduction tree components that leverage the redundant decimal encodings to help reduce delay. A split reduction tree architecture is also introduced that reduces the delay of the binary product with only a small increase in total area. Area and delay estimates are presented that show that the proposed designs have significant area improvements over separate binary and decimal multipliers while still maintaining similar latencies for both decimal and binary operations.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 8, 2008
    Date of Patent: November 5, 2013
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Mark Alan Erle, Brian John Hickmann
  • Patent number: 8417761
    Abstract: The digital propagate, digit generate, sum+0, and sum+1 terms used in typical carry-propagate adders are generated directly off the multiplicand. During the direct generation, the logic takes into account that each digit will be tripled and if each digit's next less significant digit is greater than 4. Using this technique, the generation of the multiplicand is significantly faster and uses less circuitry.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 8, 2008
    Date of Patent: April 9, 2013
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Mark Alan Erle, Brian John Hickmann
  • Publication number: 20100146030
    Abstract: A combined binary/decimal fixed-point multiplier that uses BCD-4221 recoding for the decimal digits. This allows the use of binary carry-save hardware to perform decimal addition with a small correction. The described designs provide an improved reduction tree organization to reduce the area and delay of the multiplier and improved reduction tree components that leverage the redundant decimal encodings to help reduce delay. A split reduction tree architecture is also introduced that reduces the delay of the binary product with only a small increase in total area. Area and delay estimates are presented that show that the proposed designs have significant area improvements over separate binary and decimal multipliers while still maintaining similar latencies for both decimal and binary operations.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 8, 2008
    Publication date: June 10, 2010
    Applicant: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
    Inventors: Mark Alan Erle, Brian John Hickmann
  • Publication number: 20100146031
    Abstract: The digital propagate, digit generate, sum+0, and sum+1 terms used in typical carry-propagate adders are generated directly off the multiplicand. During the direct generation, the logic takes into account that each digit will be tripled and if each digit's next less significant digit is greater than 4. Using this technique, the generation of the multiplicand is significantly faster and uses less circuitry.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 8, 2008
    Publication date: June 10, 2010
    Applicant: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
    Inventors: Mark Alan Erle, Brian John Hickmann