GEOMETRY PIPELINE IMPLEMENTED ON A SIMD MACHINE

Instructions in an execution pipeline of a SIMD machine are monitored, preferably in the instruction decode phase. Upon detecting a 1/x or 1/sqrt(x) reciprocal operation, portions of the data are forwarded to logic that implements the given instruction. The portions of the instruction that are forwarded include the data value of x and the target address (or register) to which to write the result. The logic generates an n-bit seed for iterative processing by an arithmetic unit, and eliminates a requirement to provide lookup tables in each SIMD processor.