Extending The Real Numbers
The IEEE standard employs (and extends) the affinely extended real number system, with separate positive and negative infinities. During drafting, there was a proposal for the standard to incorporate the projectively extended real number system, with a single unsigned infinity, by providing programmers with a mode selection option. In the interest of reducing the complexity of the final standard, the projective mode was dropped, however. The Intel 8087 and Intel 80287 floating point co-processors both support this projective mode.
Read more about this topic: IEEE 754-1985
Famous quotes containing the words extending, real and/or numbers:
“In my experience, if you have to keep the lavatory door shut by extending your left leg, it’s modern architecture.”
—Nancy Banks-Smith, British columnist. Guardian (London, February 20, 1979)
“Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“One murder makes a villain, millions a hero. Numbers sanctify, my good fellow.”
—Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977)