Methods and apparatus for performing dynamic data alignment for floating-point operations

An integrated circuit is provided that performs floating-point operations involving at least two successive computational steps. Two floating-point numbers entering any additional computational step after the first computational step are aligned dynamically by shifting the mantissa of the floating-point number with the greater exponent to the left and the mantissa of the floating-point number with the smaller exponent to the right. The number of left shift bits is dependent on the magnitude of the difference between the two floating-point exponents and the number of leading zeroes in the mantissa with the greater exponent. The number of right shift bits is dependent on the magnitude of the difference between the two floating-point exponents and the number of left shift bits.