ARM Assembly Language, 2nd Edition

Chapter 9

Introduction to Floating-Point

Basics, Data Types, and Data Transfer

9.1 Introduction

In Chapter 1 we looked briefly at the formats of the floating-point data types called single-precision and double-precision. These data types are referred to as float and double, respectively, in C, C++, and Java. These formats have been the standard since the acceptance of the IEEE Standard for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic (IEEE Standard 1985), known as the IEEE 754-1985 standard, though floating-point was in use long before an effort to produce a standard was considered. Each computer maker had their own data types, rounding modes, exception handling, and odd numeric quirks. In this chapter we take a closer look at the single-precision floating-point ...