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In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents subsets of real numbers using an integer with a fixed precision, called the significand, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base. Numbers of this form are called floating-point numbers. [1]: 3 [2]: 10 For example, 12.345 is a floating-point number in base ten with ...
Floating-point formats. Decimal floating-point (DFP) arithmetic refers to both a representation and operations on decimal floating-point numbers. Working directly with decimal (base-10) fractions can avoid the rounding errors that otherwise typically occur when converting between decimal fractions (common in human-entered data, such as ...
t. e. 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 ...
Variable length arithmetic operations are considerably slower than fixed length format floating-point instructions. When high performance is not a requirement, but high precision is, variable length arithmetic can prove useful, though the actual accuracy of the result may not be known.
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 ...
Double-precision binary floating-point is a commonly used format on PCs, due to its wider range over single-precision floating point, in spite of its performance and bandwidth cost. It is commonly known simply as double. The IEEE 754 standard specifies a binary64 as having: Sign bit: 1 bit. Exponent: 11 bits.
With some exceptions regarding erroneous values, infinities, and denormalized numbers, Excel calculates in double-precision floating-point format from the IEEE 754 specification [1] (besides numbers, Excel uses a few other data types [2]). Although Excel allows display of up to 30 decimal places, its precision for any specific number is no more ...
In addition, it supports arbitrary-precision floating-point numbers, bigfloats. Maple, Mathematica, and several other computer algebra software include arbitrary-precision arithmetic. Mathematica employs GMP for approximate number computation. PARI/GP, an open source computer algebra system that supports arbitrary precision.