INSTRUCTIONS TO CONVERT FROM FP16 TO FP8

• Main Authors: Charney, Mark, Sherman, Uri, Gradstein, Amit, Adelman, Menachem, Heinecke, Alexander, Valentine, Robert, Hughes, Christopher, Georganas, Evangelos, Rubanovich, Simon, Sperber, Zeev, Mellempudi, Naveen
• Format: Patent
• Language: English; French; German
• Published: 07.02.2024
• Subjects: CALCULATING; COMPUTING; COUNTING; ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING; PHYSICS

Techniques for converting FP16 to BF8 using bias are described. An example embodiment utilizes decoder circuitry to decode a single instruction, the single instruction to include one or more fields to identify a first source operand, one or more fields to identify a second source operand, one or more fields to identify a source/destination operand, and one or more fields for an opcode, wherein the opcode is to indicate that execution circuitry is to convert packed half-precision data from the identified first and second sources to packed FP8 data using bias terms from the identified source/destination operand and store the packed FP8 data into corresponding data element positions of the identified source/destination operand; and execution circuitry to execute the decoded instruction according to the opcode to convert packed half-precision data from the identified first and second sources to packed FP8 data using bias terms from the identified source/destination operand and store the packed FP8 data into corresponding data element positions of the identified source/destination operand.