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Floating Point Representation

The document discusses floating point representation of numbers in computers. It describes how floating point representation uses three fields - sign, significant digits or mantissa, and exponent. It then gives an example of representing the number 111100001111010 in floating point format. The document also describes the IEEE 754 standards for 32-bit and 64-bit floating point number representation, including how the exponent is stored using a bias to allow for negative exponents.

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14 views3 pages

Floating Point Representation

The document discusses floating point representation of numbers in computers. It describes how floating point representation uses three fields - sign, significant digits or mantissa, and exponent. It then gives an example of representing the number 111100001111010 in floating point format. The document also describes the IEEE 754 standards for 32-bit and 64-bit floating point number representation, including how the exponent is stored using a bias to allow for negative exponents.

Uploaded by

purvivaghela2003
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Floating point representation

● In floating point representation, the computer must be able to represent the


numbers and can be operated on them in such a way that the position of the
binary point is variable and is automatically adjusted as computation proceeds,
for the accommodation of very large integers and very small fractions. In this
case, the binary point is said to be the float, and the numbers are called the
floating point numbers.
● The floating point representation has three fields:
○ Sign
○ Significant digits and
○ Exponents
● Let us consider the number 1 1 1 1 0 1. 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 to be represented in the
floating point format.
●

To represent the number in floating point format, the first binary point is shifted to
the right of the first bit and the number is multiplied by the correct scaling factor
to get the same value. The number is said to be in the normalized form.
● It is important to note that the base in the scaling factor is fixed 2.
● The string of the significant digits is commonly known as mantissa.
● In the above example, we can say that,

Sign = 0
Mantissa = 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0
Exponent =5

● In floating point numbers, the bias value is added to the true exponent. This
solves the problem of representation of negative exponents.

IEEE Standards for Floating Point Numbers


● The standards for the representation of floating point numbers in 32 bits and 64
bits have been developed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
(IEEE), which is referred to as IEEE 754 standards.
● The standard representation of floating point numbers in 32 bits is called a single
precision representation because it occupies a single 32 bit word. The 32 bits
divided into three fields:
○ (Field 1) Sign = 1 bit
○ (Field 2) Exponent = 8 bits
○ (Field 3) Mantissa = 23 bits
●

Instead of the signed exponent E, the value actually stored in the exponent field
is E' = E (Scaling factor) + bias.
● In the 32 bit floating point system (single precision), bias is 127. Hence E' = E
(scaling factor) + 127. This representation of the exponent is called the excess
127 format.
● In a single precision,the end values of E' respectively are used to indicate the
floating point values of exact zero and infinity where the values of E' are namely
the 0 and 255.
● Thus the range of E' for normal values in the single precision is 0 < E' < 255. This
means that for the representation of a floating point number in 32 bits, the actual
exponent E is in the range -126 <= E <= 127.
● The 64 bit standard representation is called a double precision representation
because it occupies two 32 bit words.
● The 64 bits are divided into three fields:
○ (Field 1) Sign = 1 bit
○ (Field 2) Exponent = 11 bit
○ (Field 3) Mantissa = 52 bits
● In the double precision format value actually stored in the exponent field is given
as E' = E + 1023
● Here, the bias value is 1023 and hence it is also called excess 1023 format.
● The end values of E' namely 0 and 2047 are used to indicate the floating point
exact values of zero and infinity, respectively.
● Thus the range of E' for normal values in double precision is 0 < E' < 2047. This
means that for 64 bit representation the actual exponent E is in the range -1022
<= E <= 1023.

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