The difference between 1 and the next larger representable floating-point number, a measure of relative precision: 2⁻²³ (about 1.19 × 10⁻⁷) in single precision and 2⁻⁵² (about 2.2 × 10⁻¹⁶) in double.
Field: Computer Arithmetic
That gap, 2⁻²³ ≈ 1.19 × 10⁻⁷, is machine epsilon, indicating single precision's relative precision of about seven digits.
What is the machine epsilon (the gap between 1 and the next…IEEE 754 Significand Arithmetic shift bfloat16 Booth's algorithm Carry-lookahead adder Carry-save adder Catastrophic cancellation Exponent field Fixed point