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In computing, half precision (sometimes called FP16 or float16) is a binary floating-point computer number format that occupies 16 bits (two bytes in modern computers) in computer memory. It is intended for storage of floating-point values in applications where higher precision is not essential, in particular image processing and neural networks .
There are three binary floating-point basic formats (encoded with 32, 64 or 128 bits) and two decimal floating-point basic formats (encoded with 64 or 128 bits). The binary32 and binary64 formats are the single and double formats of IEEE 754-1985 respectively.
The "decimal" data type of the C# and Python programming languages, and the decimal formats of the IEEE 754-2008 standard, are designed to avoid the problems of binary floating-point representations when applied to human-entered exact decimal values, and make the arithmetic always behave as expected when numbers are printed in decimal.
Additionally, they are frequently encountered as a pedagogical tool in computer-science courses to demonstrate the properties and structures of floating-point arithmetic and IEEE 754 numbers. Minifloats with 16 bits are half-precision numbers (opposed to single and double precision ).
Bounds on conversion between decimal and binary for the 80-bit format can be given as follows: If a decimal string with at most 18 significant digits is correctly rounded to an 80-bit IEEE 754 binary floating-point value (as on input) then converted back to the same number of significant decimal digits (as for output), then the final string ...
Used in Python 2.3 and up, and Java SE 7. ... a more accurate method of summing floating-point numbers; ... convert binary numbers to BCD; Hash function: convert a ...
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 ...
To convert a fixed-point number to floating-point, one may convert the integer to floating-point and then divide it by the scaling factor S. This conversion may entail rounding if the integer's absolute value is greater than 2 24 (for binary single-precision IEEE floating point) or of 2 53 (for double-precision).