IEEE 854-1987

It is intended that an implementation of a floating-point system conforming to this standard can be realized entirely in software, entirely in hardware, or in any combination of software and hardware. It is the environment the programmer or user of the system sees that conforms or fails to conform to this standard. Hardware components that require software support to conform shall not be said to conform apart from such software.



New IEEE Standard - Superseded. A family of commercially feasible ways for new systems to perform floating-point arithmetic is defined. This standard specifies constraints on parameters defining values of basic and extended floating-point numbers; add, subtract, multiply, divide, square root, remainder, and compare operations; conversions between integers and floating-point numbers; conversions between different floating-point precisions; conversion between basic precision floating-point numbers and decimal strings; and floating-point exceptions and their handling, including nonnumbers. It is intended that an implementation of a floating-point system conforming to this standard can be realized entirely in software, entirely in hardware, or in any combination of software and hardware. Retrofitting issues are not considered.