How are floating point numbers stored in a computer?

Question

How are floating point numbers stored in a computer?

Answer 1

Hi

Have a look at:

http://www.math.uic.edu/~hanson/mcs471/F...

Regards

G

Answer 2

IEEE Standard for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic (IEEE 754) is the most widely-used standard for floating-point computation, and is followed by many CPU and FPU implementations. The standard defines formats for representing floating-point numbers (including negative zero and denormal numbers) and special values (infinities and NaNs) together with a set of floating-point operations that operate on these values. It also specifies four rounding modes and five exceptions (including when the exceptions occur, and what happens when they do occur).

Answer 3

http://fluorescence.fjfi.cvut.cz/~adamek...

Answer 4

There are a couple of different ways that you can store them. One way is to store the upper half in one memory location and the lower half in another. There are official names for the upper and lower halves btw. Another way is to store the numbers in sequence, and then append a sign bit and a number that tells you where to put the decimal point. Depends on the programming application, style, and efficiency desired. This is a general answer, but that is how it is done. For certain processors, one storage way over another will result in greater efficiency.

Answer 5

That upper/lower part is exponent/mantissa, it is standard IEEE storage method for floatings. The others I am not aware they were largely implemented anywhere.

Think scientific notation and you got the exp/man method; there are few possible variations for them.