Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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]).
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.
[1]: 22 [2]: 10 For example, in a floating-point arithmetic with five base-ten digits, the sum 12.345 + 1.0001 = 13.3451 might be rounded to 13.345. The term floating point refers to the fact that the number's radix point can "float" anywhere to the left, right, or between the significant digits of the number.
FLOPS can be recorded in different measures of precision, for example, the TOP500 supercomputer list ranks computers by 64 bit (double-precision floating-point format) operations per second, abbreviated to FP64. [9] Similar measures are available for 32-bit (FP32) and 16-bit (FP16) operations.
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 ...
The IEEE standard stores the sign, exponent, and significand in separate fields of a floating point word, each of which has a fixed width (number of bits). The two most commonly used levels of precision for floating-point numbers are single precision and double precision.
In computer science and numerical analysis, unit in the last place or unit of least precision (ulp) is the spacing between two consecutive floating-point numbers, i.e., the value the least significant digit (rightmost digit) represents if it is 1.
For example, while a fixed-point representation that allocates 8 decimal digits and 2 decimal places can represent the numbers 123456.78, 8765.43, 123.00, and so on, a floating-point representation with 8 decimal digits could also represent 1.2345678, 1234567.8, 0.000012345678, 12345678000000000, and so on.