FLOATING-POINT NUMBER

REPRESENTATION

Dr. Konstantinos Tatas

ACOE161 - Digital Lo 1
 The range/accuracy problem
The range of numbers that can be
n
represented with n bits is 2
In 2s complement: from - 2n/2 to 2n/2 -1
For n=8: From 128 to +127
For n=16: From 32,768 to +32,767
Still, in many application an even larger
range is required

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 Real numbers
M b e

Instead of representing the actual value, in the

base system, we represent the sign, M, b and e
3 105 300000
2.5 106 2500000
2
4 10 0.04

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 FLOATING-POINT
REPRESENTATION
Sign (S) Biased exponent (E) Unsigned normalized mantissa (M)
F (1) S M E (1) S 1.M 2 E bias
IEEE short real: 8 bits for the exponent (in Ex-
127), 23 bits for the mantissa
IEEE long real: 11 bits for the exponent, 52
bits for the mantissa

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RESERVED VALUES

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 Examples (IEEE short real format)
Binary Normalized exponent Biased Sign, exponent, mantissa
value Binary value Exponent
(Excess -127
-1.01 -1.01 0 127 1 01111111 0100000000000000000000

+1011.0101 +1.0110101 +3 130 0 01000010 0110101000000000000000

-0.0000011 -1.1 -6 121 1 01111001 1000000000000000000000

+11010101 +1.11010101 +7 134 0 10000110 1101010100000000000000

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 Homework
Convert the following 2s complement
values to IEEE short real floating-point
representation
10011010
0110.0101
0.1111110
1100.0001

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