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In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic on subsets of real numbers formed by a signed sequence of a fixed number of digits in some base, called a significand, scaled by an integer exponent of that base. Numbers of this form are called floating-point numbers. [1]: 3 [2]: 10
The number 123.45 can be represented as a decimal floating-point number with the integer 12345 as the significand and a 10 −2 power term, also called characteristics, [11] [12] [13] where −2 is the exponent (and 10 is the base). Its value is given by the following arithmetic: 123.45 = 12345 × 10 −2. The same value can also be represented ...
Double-precision floating-point format (sometimes called FP64 or float64) is a floating-point number format, usually occupying 64 bits in computer memory; it represents a wide range of numeric values by using a floating radix point. Double precision may be chosen when the range or precision of single precision would be insufficient.
ARM processors support (via a floating-point control register bit) an "alternative half-precision" format, which does away with the special case for an exponent value of 31 (11111 2). [10] It is almost identical to the IEEE format, but there is no encoding for infinity or NaNs; instead, an exponent of 31 encodes normalized numbers in the range ...
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 ...
If the mantissa is allowed to be 0-bit, a 1-bit float format would have a 1-bit exponent, and the only two values would be 0 and Inf. The exponent must be at least 1 bit or else it no longer makes sense as a float (it would just be a signed number). 4-bit floating point numbers — without the four special IEEE values — have found use in ...
In a normal floating-point value, there are no leading zeros in the significand (also commonly called mantissa); rather, leading zeros are removed by adjusting the exponent (for example, the number 0.0123 would be written as 1.23 × 10 −2). Conversely, a denormalized floating point value has a significand with a leading digit of zero.
Its integer part is the largest exponent shown on the output of a value in scientific notation with one leading digit in the significand before the decimal point (e.g. 1.698·10 38 is near the largest value in binary32, 9.999999·10 96 is the largest value in decimal32).