Computer Arithmetic

Which three parts make up an IEEE 754 floating-point number?

  1. ASign, exponent and significand
  2. BInteger part, fractional part and carry
  3. CHigh byte, low byte and parity
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Answer: A. Sign, exponent and significand

A floating-point number represents a value as (−1)^sign × 1.significand × 2^exponent and stores three parts: a sign bit for positive or negative, an exponent field for the power of two, and a significand for the significant digits. Because the exponent moves the binary point, the same number of bits covers values from tiny to huge. Splitting into integer and fractional parts is the fixed-point idea, and parity is for error detection.

  • A. Correct. It consists of sign, exponent and significand.
  • B. Splitting into integer and fraction parts is the fixed-point idea.
  • C. Parity is for error detection and is not a component.
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More Computer Arithmetic questions

  1. How are the bits of an IEEE 754 single-precision (32-bit) number allocated among sign, exponent and significand?
  2. In IEEE 754 double precision (64-bit), how many bits are the exponent and significand?
  3. In IEEE 754 single precision, if the stored exponent field is 130, what is the actual exponent (power of two)?
  4. What is the effect of not storing the leading 1 of the significand (the hidden bit) in IEEE 754 normalized numbers?
  5. What is the hexadecimal bit pattern of decimal 1.0 in IEEE 754 single precision?