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[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.
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.
A floating-point unit (FPU), numeric processing unit (NPU), [1] colloquially math coprocessor, is a part of a computer system specially designed to carry out operations on floating-point numbers. [2] Typical operations are addition , subtraction , multiplication , division , and square root .
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.
Decimal floating-point (DFP) arithmetic refers to both a representation and operations on decimal floating-point numbers. Working directly with decimal (base-10) fractions can avoid the rounding errors that otherwise typically occur when converting between decimal fractions (common in human-entered data, such as measurements or financial ...
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 ...
Variable-length arithmetic operations are considerably slower than fixed-length format floating-point instructions. When high performance is not a requirement, but high precision is, variable length arithmetic can prove useful, though the actual accuracy of the result may not be known.
Floating-point operations are typically used in fields such as scientific computational research, as well as in machine learning. However, before the late 1980s floating-point hardware (it's possible to implement FP arithmetic in software over any integer hardware) was typically an optional feature, and computers that had it were said to be ...