HP-UX Floating-Point Guide

Chapter 2 61
Floating-Point Principles and the IEEE Standard for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic
Floating-Point Operations
Floating-Point Operations
The IEEE standard requires a complying system to support the following
floating-point operations:
Addition Algebraic addition.
Subtraction Algebraic subtraction.
Multiplication Algebraic multiplication.
Division Algebraic division.
Comparison There are four possible relations between any two
floating-point values: less than, equal, greater than,
and unordered. The unordered relation occurs when
one or both of the operands is a Not-a-Number (NaN).
See “Comparison” on page 62 for details.
Square Root The square root operation never overflows or
underflows.
Conversion The following conversions must be supported by a
conforming implementation, if the implementation
supports single-precision, double-precision, and
quad-precision formats:
• Single-precision to double-precision
• Single-precision to quad-precision
• Double-precision to single-precision
• Double-precision to quad-precision
• Quad-precision to single-precision
• Quad-precision to double-precision
• Floating-point to integer
• Integer to floating-point
• Binary floating-point to decimal
• Decimal to binary floating-point
See “Conversion Between Operand Formats” on
page 64 for more information about these conversions.