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The significand [1] (also coefficient, [1] sometimes argument, [2] or more ambiguously mantissa, [3] fraction, [4] [5] [nb 1] or characteristic [6] [3]) is the first (left) part of a number in scientific notation or related concepts in floating-point representation, consisting of its significant digits. For negative numbers, it does not include ...
The integer n is called the exponent and the real number m is called the significand or mantissa. [1] The term "mantissa" can be ambiguous where logarithms are involved, because it is also the traditional name of the fractional part of the common logarithm. If the number is negative then a minus sign precedes m, as in ordinary decimal notation.
The arithmetical difference between two consecutive representable floating-point numbers which have the same exponent is called a unit in the last place (ULP). For example, if there is no representable number lying between the representable numbers 1.45a70c22 hex and 1.45a70c24 hex , the ULP is 2×16 −8 , or 2 −31 .
Several earlier 16-bit floating point formats have existed including that of Hitachi's HD61810 DSP of 1982 (a 4-bit exponent and a 12-bit mantissa), [2] Thomas J. Scott's WIF of 1991 (5 exponent bits, 10 mantissa bits) [3] and the 3dfx Voodoo Graphics processor of 1995 (same as Hitachi). [4]
The part of the representation that contains the significant figures (1.30 or 1.23) is known as the significand or mantissa. The digits in the base and exponent ( 10 3 or 10 −2 ) are considered exact numbers so for these digits, significant figures are irrelevant.
Mantissa (/ m æ n ˈ t ɪ s ə /) may refer to: Mantissa (logarithm) , the fractional part of the common (base-10) logarithm Significand (also commonly called mantissa), the significant digits of a floating-point number or a number in scientific notation
In the IEEE standard the base is binary, i.e. =, and normalization is used.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).
Exponent bias = 7F H = 127; Thus, in order to get the true exponent as defined by the offset-binary representation, the offset of 127 has to be subtracted from the value of the exponent field. The minimum and maximum values of the exponent field (00 H and FF H) are interpreted specially, like in the IEEE 754 standard formats.