\chapter{``L'' Standard Extension for Decimal Floating-Point, Version 0.0}

{\bf This chapter is a draft proposal that has not been ratified by
  the Foundation.}

This chapter is a placeholder for the specification of a standard
extension named ``L'' designed to support decimal floating-point
arithmetic as defined in the IEEE 754-2008 standard.

\section{Decimal Floating-Point Registers}

Existing floating-point registers are used to hold 64-bit and 128-bit
decimal floating-point values, and the existing floating-point load
and store instructions are used to move values to and from memory.

\begin{commentary}
Due to the large opcode space required by the fused multiply-add
instructions, the decimal floating-point instruction extension will
require five 25-bit major opcodes in a 30-bit encoding space.
\end{commentary}