It varies from 16 bits to 256 bits.

Go to the wikipedia.org article on "IEEE floating point" for an overview.


On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 3:30 PM, Ray Jewhurst <raywjewhu...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Just out of curiosity how many bits does the IEEE standard require for
> floating point?
>
> On Oct 17, 2016 3:51 PM, "Leo Broukhis" <l...@mailcom.com> wrote:
>
>> Dijkstra is above reproach; I try to compare the averages.
>>
>> Having eps^2 = eps is cute, but, given that the idea didn't spread to
>> other pre-IEEE f.p. implementations nor to IEEE (it is possible to
>> iteratively square a number x with 0 < abs(x) < 1 down to 0, given enough
>> iterations, denormals or not), it appears that the Electrologica floating
>> point turned out to be impractical.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 11:35 AM, Paul Koning <paulkon...@comcast.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> > On Oct 17, 2016, at 2:26 PM, Leo Broukhis <l...@mailcom.com> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > > I think that the same answer applies to your narrower question,
>>> though I didn't see it mentioned specifically in the documents I've read.
>>> >
>>> > That's somewhat comforting; I'd hate to think that the BESM-6
>>> programmers were substantially sloppier than their Western colleagues. :)
>>>
>>> As you probably know, Dijkstra was a whole lot more disciplined than the
>>> vast majority of his colleagues.
>>>
>>> > > For example, the treatment of underflow and very small numbers in
>>> Electrologica was novel at the time; Knuth specifically refers to it in a
>>> > > footnote of Volume 2.  The EL-X8 would never turn a non-zero result
>>> into zero, for example.
>>> >
>>> > For most but not all values of "never", I presume. What was the result
>>> of squaring the number with the least representable absolute value?
>>>
>>> The least representable positive value.  See the paper by F. E. J.
>>> Kruseman Aretz that I mentioned.
>>>
>>> >
>>> > > I think IEEE ended up doing the same thing, but  that was almost 20
>>> years later.
>>> >
>>> > Are you're thinking about denormals?
>>>
>>> I think so, but I'll be the first to admit that I don't really know
>>> floating point.
>>>
>>>         paul
>>>
>>>
>>
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