Floating-point representations can support a much wider range of values than fixed-point, with the ability to represent very small numbers and very large numbers.

This standard defines the format for 32-bit numbers called single precision, as well as 64-bit numbers called double precision and longer numbers called extended precision (used for intermediate results). While several similar formats are in use, the most common is ANSI/IEEE Std. The encoding scheme stores the sign, the exponent (in base two for Cray and VAX, base two or ten for IEEE floating point formats, and base 16 for IBM Floating Point Architecture) and the significand (number after the radix point). Floating-point representation is similar to scientific notation, except everything is carried out in base two, rather than base ten. For such cases, it is a more accurate measure than measuring instructions per second.įloating-point arithmetic is needed for very large or very small real numbers, or computations that require a large dynamic range. In computing, floating point operations per second ( FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. FLOPS by the largest supercomputer over time

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