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Variable length arithmetic represents numbers as a string of digits of a variable's length limited only by the memory available. Variable-length arithmetic operations are considerably slower than fixed-length format floating-point instructions.
Round-to-nearest: () is set to the nearest floating-point number to . When there is a tie, the floating-point number whose last stored digit is even (also, the last digit, in binary form, is equal to 0) is used.
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.
The actual errors of machine arithmetic are far too complicated to be studied directly, so instead, the following simple model is used. The IEEE arithmetic standard says all floating-point operations are done as if it were possible to perform the infinite-precision operation, and then, the result is rounded to a floating-point number.
Single-precision floating-point format (sometimes called FP32 or float32) is a computer number format, usually occupying 32 bits in computer memory; it represents a wide dynamic range of numeric values by using a floating radix point. A floating-point variable can represent a wider range of numbers than a fixed-point variable of the same bit ...
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 ...
The algorithm does not mandate any specific choice of radix, only for the arithmetic to "normalize floating-point sums before rounding or truncating". [3] Computers typically use binary arithmetic, but to make the example easier to read, it will be given in decimal.
Arithmetic underflow can occur when the true result of a floating-point operation is smaller in magnitude (that is, closer to zero) than the smallest value representable as a normal floating-point number in the target datatype. [1] Underflow can in part be regarded as negative overflow of the exponent of the floating-point value. For example ...