Joseph D. Darcy's Sun Weblog

Tuesday October 03, 2006

IEEE 754R Ballot

For a number of years, the venerable IEEE 754 standard for binary floating-point arithmetic has been undergoing revision and the committee's results will soon be up for ballot. Back in 2003, I was editor of the draft for a few months and helped incorporate the decimal material.

The balloting process provides the opportunity for interested parties, such as consumers of the standard, to weigh in with comments; instructions for joining the ballot are available. The deadline for signing up has been extended to October 21, 2006.

Major changes from 754 include:

• Support for decimal formats and arithmetic
• Fused multiply add operation
• More explicit conceptual model of levels of specification
• Hexadecimal strings for binary floating-point values
• Annexes giving recommendations on expression evaluation, alternate exception handling, and transcendental functions