Double-precision floating-point format

Double-precision floating-point format is a computer number format, usually occupying 64 bits in computer memory; it represents a wide dynamic range of numeric values by using a floating radix point. Double-precision floating-point format is a computer number format, usually occupying 64 bits in computer memory; it represents a wide dynamic range of numeric values by using a floating radix point. Floating point is used to represent fractional values, or when a wider range is needed than is provided by fixed point (of the same bit width), even if at the cost of precision. Double precision may be chosen when the range or precision of single precision would be insufficient. In the IEEE 754-2008 standard, the 64-bit base-2 format is officially referred to as binary64; it was called double in IEEE 754-1985. IEEE 754 specifies additional floating-point formats, including 32-bit base-2 single precision and, more recently, base-10 representations. One of the first programming languages to provide single- and double-precision floating-point data types was Fortran. Before the widespread adoption of IEEE 754-1985, the representation and properties of floating-point data types depended on the computer manufacturer and computer model, and upon decisions made by programming-language implementers. E.g., GW-BASIC's double-precision data type was the 64-bit MBF floating-point format. Double-precision binary floating-point is a commonly used format on PCs, due to its wider range over single-precision floating point, in spite of its performance and bandwidth cost. As with single-precision floating-point format, it lacks precision on integer numbers when compared with an integer format of the same size. It is commonly known simply as double. The IEEE 754 standard specifies a binary64 as having: The sign bit determines the sign of the number (including when this number is zero, which is signed). The exponent field can be interpreted as either an 11-bit signed integer from −1024 to 1023 (2's complement) or an 11-bit unsigned integer from 0 to 2047, which is the accepted biased form in the IEEE 754 binary64 definition. If the unsigned integer format is used, the exponent value used in the arithmetic is the exponent shifted by a bias – for the IEEE 754 binary64 case, an exponent value of 1023 represents the actual zero (i.e. for 2e − 1023 to be one, e must be 1023). Exponents range from −1022 to +1023 because exponents of −1023 (all 0s) and +1024 (all 1s) are reserved for special numbers. The 53-bit significand precision gives from 15 to 17 significant decimal digits precision (2−53 ≈ 1.11 × 10−16). If a decimal string with at most 15 significant digits is converted to IEEE 754 double-precision representation, and then converted back to a decimal string with the same number of digits, the final result should match the original string. If an IEEE 754 double-precision number is converted to a decimal string with at least 17 significant digits, and then converted back to double-precision representation, the final result must match the original number. The format is written with the significand having an implicit integer bit of value 1 (except for special data, see the exponent encoding below). With the 52 bits of the fraction significand appearing in the memory format, the total precision is therefore 53 bits (approximately 16 decimal digits, 53 log10(2) ≈ 15.955). The bits are laid out as follows: