Floating point numbers have been around for as long as digital computers; the Zuse Z1, the first binary, programmable mechanical computer used a 24-bit number representation that included a sign ...

In .NET 5 Preview 7, Microsoft has now introduced another floating-point datatype alongside the standard Float and Double. Dubbed Half, the new datatype is equivalent to binary16, which is ...

FPU challenges Floating-point representations of real numbers have significant advantages over fixed-point. For example, given a fixed bit width for binary encoding, floating-point formats cover a ...

Floating point processors primarily represent numbers in floating point format, although they can also support integer representation and calculations. Floating point format implements numerical value ...

Today a company called Bounded Floating Point announced a breakthrough patent in processor design, which allows representation of real numbers accurate to the last digit "for the first time in ...

Floating point also enables calculating a wide range of numbers very quickly. Although floating point dates back thousands of years, the concept is the same today.

If you’d had asked us if converting integer division to floating point might make a program run faster, we’d have bet the answer was no, but we’d have been wrong.

Bfloat16 is an emerging way to handle very large numbers, developed by Google for its machine and neural learning and prediction. We look at what it means for IT and storage.