One can realize the alignment shift and sticky bit computation of the floating point adder by a stack of trivial shifters. The sticky bit is computed by simply ORing together bits, which are shifted...

One can realize the alignment shift and sticky bit computation of the floating point adder by a stack of trivial shifters. The sticky bit is computed by simply ORing together bits, which are shifted out.

1. Determine the cost and the delay of this construction.

2. In the stack of trivial shifters, perform large shifts first. Then carefully arrange the OR-tree which computes the sticky bit. How much does this improve the dealy?