created: 05/29/2002; small changes: 11/11/2002; revised: 05/25/2015, 08/03/2020
created: 05/29/2002; small changes: 11/11/2002; revised: 05/25/2015, 08/03/2020
This chapter is about the IEEE 754 floating point standard. This is a standard for the floating point numbers that are used in nearly all computers and programming languages since 1985. Java floating point (on its virtual processor) and MIPS floating point (on real hardware) conform to this standard.
(Review: ) Is it absolutely essential that a processor support floating point data?