IBM Floating Point Architecture

IBM Floating Point Architecture

IBM System/360 computers, and subsequent machines based on that architecture (mainframes), support a hexadecimal floating-point format.

In comparison to IEEE 754 floating-point, the IBM floating-point format has a longer significand, and a shorter exponent. All IBM floating-point formats have 7 bits of exponent with a bias of 64. The normalized range of representable numbers are from 16-65 to 1663 (approx. 5.39761 × 10-79 to 7.237005 × 1075).

The number is represented as the following formula: (-1)sign × 0.significand × 16exponent-64

Read more about IBM Floating Point Architecture:  Single-precision 32-bit, Double-precision 64-bit, Extended-precision 128-bit, Arithmetic Operations, IEEE 754 On IBM Mainframes, Special Uses, Systems Which Use Base-16 Excess-64 Floating-Point Format

Famous quotes containing the words floating, point and/or architecture:

    Again we mistook a little rocky islet seen through the “drisk,” with some taller bare trunks or stumps on it, for the steamer with its smoke-pipes, but as it had not changed its position after half an hour, we were undeceived. So much do the works of man resemble the works of nature. A moose might mistake a steamer for a floating isle, and not be scared till he heard its puffing or its whistle.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Lieutenant, I’d like to point out to you that I don’t have to put up with this crap from you. I’m not in your two-bit army, I’m in our two-bit army.
    Bryan Forbes (b. 1926)

    I don’t think of form as a kind of architecture. The architecture is the result of the forming. It is the kinesthetic and visual sense of position and wholeness that puts the thing into the realm of art.
    Roy Lichtenstein (b. 1923)