Talk:Denormal number
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Moving (not deleting) this here until some sort of consensus arises (edited to clarify different inputs). Please add signatures, and apologies if I got anything wrong ...
(External link)
- Why is this here? The PDF seems to suggest that subnormals are the same as zero...(!)
- No, the pdf doesn’t says that, read it more carefully. Denormals are very small relative to “normal” numbers in some applications. Their existence introduces slowness in the processing, so it may be better to remove or avoid them, the computation accuracy not being impacted. The paper focuses on this issue. (the author)
...
Suggestion: It would be useful (to me, and probably others) to show a few specific examples of denormal and subnormal numbers. From the description "denormal numbers are encoded with a biased exponent of 0, but are interpreted with the value of the smallest allowed exponent, which is one greater (i.e., as if it were encoded as a 1)" I don't think I could tell you how a denormal number is encoded, but with a couple of examples I could probably grasp the concept.
