1-5 Floating point Representation

 Floating Point Numbers

A real number or floating point number is a number which has both an integer and fractional part. Examples for real real decimal numbers are 123.45, 0.1234, -0.12345, etc. Examples for a real binary numbers are 1100.1100, 0.1001, -1.001, etc. In general, floating point numbers are expressed in exponential notation.

For example the decimal number 30000.0 can be written as 3 x 104 , 312.45 can be written as 3.1245 x 102.

Similarly, the binary number 1010.001 can be written as 1.010001 x 103.

The general form of a number N can b expressed as

N = ± m x b±e

Where m is mantissa, b is the base of number system and e is the exponent. A floating point number is represented by two parts. The first part, called mantissa, of the number is a signed fixed point number and the second part, called exponent, specifies the decimal or binary position.

Binary Representation of Floating Point Numbers

A floating point binary number is also represented as in the case of decimal numbers. That's means the mantissa and exponent are expressed using signed magnitude notation in which one bit is reserved for sign bit.

Consider a 16-bit word is used to store the floating point numbers, Assume that the 9 bits are reserved for mantissa and 7-bits for exponent and also assume that the mantissa part is represented in fraction system. That implies, the assumed binary point is immediate right of sign bit of mantissa.

 

Example

A binary number 1101.01 is represented as

Mantissa = 110101

(1101.01)2 = 0.110101 X 24

Exponent = (4)10

 

Expand mantissa to 8 bits we get , 11010100

Binary representation of exponent (4)10 = 000100

 

 

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