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Floating point operations

Normalized numbers

A number is normalized if the exponent field contains other than all 1's or all 0's.

The exponent field contains a biased exponent, where the bias is 127 in single-precision, 1023 in double-precision, and 16,383 in extended-precision. Thus, the exponent of a normalized floating point number is in the range -126 to 127 inclusive for single-precision, and in the range -1022 to 1023 inclusive for double-precision. For extended-precision the range is -16,382 to 16,383.

There is an implicit bit associated with both single- and double-precision formats. The implicit bit is not explicitly stored anywhere (thus its name). Logically, for normalized operands the implicit bit has a value of 1 and resides immediately to the left of the binary point (in the 2[0] position). Thus the implicit bit and fraction field together can represent values in the range 1 to 2 - 2[-23] inclusive for single-precision, and in the range 1 to 2 - 2[-52] inclusive for double-precision. For extended-precision, there is no such bit, therefore the field can represent values in the range 1 to 2 - 2[-63]

Thus normalized single-precision numbers can be in the range (plus or minus)
2[-126] to (2 - 2[-23] ) × 2[127] inclusive.

Normalized double-precision numbers can be in the range (plus or minus)
2[-1022] to (2 - 2[-52] ) × 2[1023] inclusive.

Normalized extended-precision numbers can be in the range (plus or minus)
2[-16,382] to (2 - 2[-63] ) × 2[16,383] inclusive.


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