1/19/2008
Copyright
2005 – Tim Hoerning
7
A word about Overflow
•All binary systems have a fixed number of bits available
to them
•If a calculation exceeds these number of bits, an overflow condition has arisen.
•Overflows are typically flagged within the CPU, but at that point it is too late as the data causing the
overflow has already been
combined.
•Overflows will be useful in 2’s complement math as we shall see.
•Digital Signal Processors use accumulator registers with
extra precision to combat overflow
when multiple Multiply and
ACcumulate (MAC) are used in succession.