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In computing, a normal number is a non-zero number in a floating-point representation which is within the balanced range supported by a given floating-point format: it is a floating point number that can be represented without leading zeros in its significand. The magnitude of the smallest normal number in a format is given by:
A floating-point system can be used to represent, with a fixed number of digits, numbers of very different orders of magnitude — such as the number of meters between galaxies or between protons in an atom. For this reason, floating-point arithmetic is often used to allow very small and very large real numbers that require fast processing times.
A floating-point variable can represent a wider range of numbers than a fixed-point variable of the same bit width at the cost of precision. A signed 32-bit integer variable has a maximum value of 2 31 − 1 = 2,147,483,647, whereas an IEEE 754 32-bit base-2 floating-point variable has a maximum value of (2 − 2 −23) × 2 127 ≈ 3.4028235 ...
dc: "Desktop Calculator" arbitrary-precision RPN calculator that comes standard on most Unix-like systems. KCalc, Linux based scientific calculator; Maxima: a computer algebra system which bignum integers are directly inherited from its implementation language Common Lisp. In addition, it supports arbitrary-precision floating-point numbers ...
The significand (or mantissa) of an IEEE floating-point number is the part of a floating-point number that represents the significant digits. For a positive normalised number it can be represented as m 0.m 1 m 2 m 3...m p−2 m p−1 (where m represents a significant digit, and p is the precision) with non-zero m 0.
In many computer systems, binary floating-point numbers are represented internally using this normalized form for their representations; for details, see normal number (computing). Although the point is described as floating , for a normalized floating-point number, its position is fixed, the movement being reflected in the different values of ...
Hexadecimal floating point (now called HFP by IBM) is a format for encoding floating-point numbers first introduced on the IBM System/360 computers, and supported on subsequent machines based on that architecture, [1] [2] [3] as well as machines which were intended to be application-compatible with System/360.
The IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic (IEEE 754) is a technical standard for floating-point arithmetic originally established in 1985 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The standard addressed many problems found in the diverse floating-point implementations that made them difficult to use reliably and ...