Floating-point load and store instructions

Floating-point load instructions for single and double precision are provided. Double-precision data is loaded directly into a floating-point register. The processor converts single-precision data to double precision prior to loading the data into a floating-point register, since the floating-point registers support only floating-point double-precision operands.

Floating-point store instructions for single and double precision are provided. Single-precision stores convert floating-point register contents to single precision prior to storage.

POWER2™ provides load and store floating-point quad instructions. These are primarily to improve the performance of arithmetic operations on large volumes of numbers, such as array operations. Data access is normally a performance bottleneck for these types of operations. These instructions transfer 128 bits of data, rather than 64 bits, in one load or store operation (that is, one storage reference). The 128 bits of data is treated as two doubleword operands, not as one quadword operand.