Generating a power of an operand by a table look-up and a multiplication

An efficient method for generating a power of an operand, i.e., X/sup P/ for an operand X and a given, fixed p, is proposed. The method is applicable to p's in the form of /spl plusmn/2/sup k/ where k is any integer and of /spl plusmn/2/sup k1//spl plusmn/2/sup -(k2)/ where k1 is any integer and k2 is any non negative integer. The reciprocal, the square root, and the reciprocal square root are included as special cases. It is a modification of the piecewise linear approximation based on the first order Taylor expansion. The same accuracy is achieved. A power of an operand is generated through a table lookup and a multiplication with operand modification. No addition is required. The required table size is reduced, because only one coefficient instead of two has to be stored.