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Concept
Extended precision
Summary
Extended precision refers to floating-point number formats that provide greater precision than the basic floating-point formats. Extended precision formats support a basic format by minimizing roundoff and overflow errors in intermediate values of expressions on the base format. In contrast to extended precision, arbitrary-precision arithmetic refers to implementations of much larger numeric types (with a storage count that usually is not a power of two) using special software (or, rarely, hardware).
There is a long history of extended floating-point formats reaching back nearly to the middle of the last century. Various manufacturers have used different formats for extended precision for different machines. In many cases the format of the extended precision is not quite the same as a scale-up of the ordinary single- and double-precision formats it is meant to extend. In a few cases the implementation was merely a software-based change in the floating-point data format, but in most cases extended precision was implemented in hardware, either built into the central processor itself, or more often, built into the hardware of an optional, attached processor called a "floating-point unit" (FPU) or "floating-point processor" (FPP), accessible to the CPU as a fast input / output device.
The IBM 1130, sold in 1965, offered two floating-point formats: A 32-bit "standard precision" format and a 40-bit "extended precision" format. Standard precision format contains a 24-bit two's complement significand while extended precision utilizes a 32-bit two's complement significand. The latter format makes full use of the CPU's 32-bit integer operations. The characteristic in both formats is an 8-bit field containing the power of two biased by 128. Floating-point arithmetic operations are performed by software, and double precision is not supported at all. The extended format occupies three 16-bit words, with the extra space simply ignored.
The IBM System/360 supports a 32-bit "short" floating-point format and a 64-bit "long" floating-point format.
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