754_WG - Working Group for Floating-Point Arithmetic

David Hough

A family of commercially feasible ways for new systems to perform binary floating-point arithmetic is defined. This standard specifies basic and extended floating-point number formats; add, subtract, multiply, divide, square root, remainder, and compare operations; conversions between integer and floating-point formats; conversions between different floating-point formats; conversions between basic-format floating-point numbers and decimal strings; and floating-point exceptions and their handling, including nonnumbers.

A family of commercially feasible ways for new systems to perform floating-point arithmetic is defined. This standard specifies constraints on parameters defining values of basic and extended floating-point numbers; add, subtract, multiply, divide, square root, remainder, and compare operations; conversions between integers and floating-point numbers; conversions between different floating-point precisions; conversion between basic precision floating-point numbers and decimal strings; and floating-point exceptions and their handling, including nonnumbers. It is intended that an implementation of a floating-point system conforming to this standard can be realized entirely in software, entirely in hardware, or in any combination of software and hardware. Retrofitting issues are not considered.

This standard specifies formats and methods for floating-point arithmetic in computer systems: standard and extended functions with single, double, extended, and extendable precision, and recommends formats for data interchange. Exception conditions are defined and standard handling of these conditions is specified.

This international standard specifies interchange and arithmetic formats and methods for binary and decimal floating-point arithmetic in computer programming environments. This standard specifies exception conditions and their default handling. An implementation of a floating-point system conforming to this standard may be realized entirely in software, entirely in hardware, or in any combination of software and hardware. For operations specified in the normative part of this standard, numerical results and exceptions are uniquely determined by the values of the input data, sequence of operations, and destination formats, all under user control.