PURPOSE: To speed up processing by setting floating point data to absolute zero forcibly if the data is nonnormalized data before use when the data is read out of a memory for processing.

CONSTITUTION: Data read out of the memory is held in a data register 10. The most significant digit bit of the mantissa part of this fetched data is checked by a zero detector 11, which outputs logic 1 when this part is zero or logic 0 when not. When the output of an AND circuit 12 is logic 1, the output of a gate circuit 13 is all logic 0 and set to absolute 0 forcibly when the data is fetched for processing. Consequently, a check on whether the mantissa part of floating point data is normalized or not is omitted.