what does floating point mean

pixeldensity · March 11, 2014

I hear this term being used when talking about gpus and cpus. I never know what it means and when I look it up I still don't know what it means. Can someone explain to me what it means? Also what is double precision?

AnotherTechGuy · March 11, 2014

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trama09 · March 11, 2014

A real-number. Or number that contains a fractional part.

- .5

- 1/2

- 5.0

- 5E5

etc

dragosudeki · March 11, 2014

Wikipedia

In computing, floating point describes a method of representing an approximation of a real number in a way that can support a wide range of values. The numbers are, in general, represented approximately to a fixed number of significant digits (the mantissa) and scaled using an exponent.

JAKEBAB · March 11, 2014

If i was him i still wouldnt understand u guys should dumb it down if u can say what it is used for and what it does.

trama09 · March 11, 2014

A decimal number, which is just a written out fraction form.

A decimal has two parts: an integer part (whole numbers) and a fraction part, which come after the "." charter. That "." is called a decimal.

This is why I can never be a teacher for anything.

You gon learn today, boy: http://floating-point-gui.de/formats/fp/