IEEE 754 The IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic (IEEE 754) is a technical standard for floating-point arithmetic established in 1985 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The standard addressed many problems found in ...

floating-point In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents real numbers approximately, using an integer with a fixed precision, called the significand, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base. For example, 12.345 can be r ...

numbers, the

exponent Exponentiation is a mathematical operation, written as , involving two numbers, the '' base'' and the ''exponent'' or ''power'' , and pronounced as " (raised) to the (power of) ". When is a positive integer, exponentiation corresponds to r ...

is biased in the engineering sense of the word – the value stored is offset from the actual value by the exponent bias, also called a biased exponent. Biasing is done because exponents have to be signed values in order to be able to represent both tiny and huge values, but

two's complement Two's complement is a mathematical operation to reversibly convert a positive binary number into a negative binary number with equivalent (but negative) value, using the binary digit with the greatest place value (the leftmost bit in big- endian ...

, the usual representation for signed values, would make comparison harder. To solve this problem the exponent is stored as an unsigned value which is suitable for comparison, and when being interpreted it is converted into an exponent within a signed range by subtracting the bias. By arranging the fields such that the sign bit takes the most significant bit position, the biased exponent takes the middle position, then the

significand The significand (also mantissa or coefficient, sometimes also argument, or ambiguously fraction or characteristic) is part of a number in scientific notation or in floating-point representation, consisting of its significant digits. Depending on ...

will be the least significant bits and the resulting value will be ordered properly. This is the case whether or not it is interpreted as a floating-point or integer value. The purpose of this is to enable high speed comparisons between floating-point numbers using fixed-point hardware. To calculate the bias for an arbitrarily sized floating-point number apply the formula 2^''k''−1 − 1 where ''k'' is the number of bits in the exponent. When interpreting the floating-point number, the bias is subtracted to retrieve the actual exponent. * For a

single-precision Single-precision floating-point format (sometimes called FP32 or float32) is a computer number format, usually occupying 32 bits in computer memory; it represents a wide dynamic range of numeric values by using a floating radix point. A floating- ...

number, the exponent is stored in the range 1 .. 254 (0 and 255 have special meanings), and is interpreted by subtracting the bias for an 8-bit exponent (127) to get an exponent value in the range −126 .. +127. * For a

double-precision Double-precision floating-point format (sometimes called FP64 or float64) is a floating-point number format, usually occupying 64 bits in computer memory; it represents a wide dynamic range of numeric values by using a floating radix point. Flo ...

number, the exponent is stored in the range 1 .. 2046 (0 and 2047 have special meanings), and is interpreted by subtracting the bias for an 11-bit exponent (1023) to get an exponent value in the range −1022 .. +1023. * For a quad-precision number, the exponent is stored in the range 1 .. 32766 (0 and 32767 have special meanings), and is interpreted by subtracting the bias for a 15-bit exponent (16383) to get an exponent value in the range −16382 .. +16383.

History

The floating-point format of the

IBM 704 The IBM 704 is a large digital mainframe computer introduced by IBM in 1954. It was the first mass-produced computer with hardware for floating-point arithmetic. The IBM 704 ''Manual of operation'' states: The type 704 Electronic Data-Proce ...

introduced the use of a biased exponent in 1954.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Exponent Bias Computer arithmetic

History

See also

References