Abstract
Floating point numbers are an important data type in computation which is used extensively. Yet, many users do not know the standard which is used in almost all computer hardware to store and process these. In this article, we explain the standards evolved by The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers in 1985 and augmented in 2008 to represent floating point numbers and process them. This standard is now used by all computer manufacturers while designing floating point arithmetic units so that programs are portable among computers.
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V Rajaraman is at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. Several generations of scientists and engineers in India have learnt computer science using his lucidly written textbooks on programming and computer fundamentals. His current research interests are parallel computing and history of computing.
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Rajaraman, V. IEEE standard for floating point numbers. Reson 21, 11–30 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-016-0292-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-016-0292-x