Semantics for exact floating point operations

Author

Bohlender, G. ; Walter, W. ; Kornerup, P. ; Matula, D.W.

Author_Institution

Inst. fur Angewandte Math., Karlsruhe Univ., Germany

fYear

1991

fDate

26-28 Jun 1991

Firstpage

22

Lastpage

26

Abstract

Semantics are given for the four elementary arithmetic operations and the square root, to characterize what are termed exact floating point operations. The operands of the arithmetic operations and the argument of the square root are all floating point numbers in one format. In every case, the result is a pair of floating point numbers in the same format with no accuracy lost in the computation. These semantics make it possible to realize the following principle: it shall be a user option to discard any information in the result of a floating point arithmetic operation. The reliability and portability previously associated with only mathematical software implementations in integer arithmetic can thus be attained exploiting the generally higher efficiency of floating point hardware

Keywords

digital arithmetic; number theory; argument; elementary arithmetic operations; exact floating point operations; floating point arithmetic; floating point hardware; floating point numbers; integer arithmetic; mathematical software; operands; portability; reliability; semantics; square root; Computer architecture; Computer science; Costs; Floating-point arithmetic; H infinity control; Hardware; Proposals; Software systems;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Computer Arithmetic, 1991. Proceedings., 10th IEEE Symposium on

Conference_Location

Grenoble

Print_ISBN

0-8186-9151-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ARITH.1991.145529

Filename

145529