Computer Arithmetic in Practice

Chapter 4 Numbers in Floating-point Format

DOI: 10.1201/9781003363286-4

The number A is written in (n + m) digits with base p, where n is the number of digits of the mantissa M, m is the number of digits of the characteristic (exponent) E (Figure 4.1).

Figure 4.1 A floating-point format of number.

Please note the different format of the above bit field compared to the fixed-point format. The term ‘floating-point’ emphasizes the possibility of expressing the same value of a number using different combinations of mantissa and exponent, as shown in Example 4.1. In the following section, we will assume p = 2, considering only binary systems.