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From: amos@SHUM.HUJI.AC.IL (amos shapir)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Integer/floating
Message-ID: <1207@shum.huji.ac.il>
Date: 23 May 91 13:19:32 GMT
References: <12451@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: amos@cs.huji.ac.il
Organization: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Lines: 13

[Quoted from the referenced article by hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)]
>
>Is the 1-bit gain from forced normalization worth the other problems?

Normalization is not done just for saving one bit.  Its main purpose is
to ensure a 1-1 correspondence between bit patterns and numeric values.
Efficiency is also served: the format used by the IEEE754 standard also
produces monotonous values, which makes comparison of FP numbers very easy.

-- 
	Amos Shapir		amos@cs.huji.ac.il
The Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem, Dept. of Comp. Science.
Tel. +972 2 585257 GEO: 35 11 46 E / 31 46 21 N