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From: mch@ukc.ac.uk (Martin Howe)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: What is IEEE *854* ?
Summary: Thanks for the info
Keywords: math float double 860 88 trap fp
Message-ID: <1060@harrier.ukc.ac.uk>
Date: 11 May 89 08:38:19 GMT
References: <774@harrier.ukc.ac.uk>
Reply-To: mch@ukc.ac.uk (Martin Howe)
Organization: Lan/Micro Group, Comp. Lab, Univ. of Kent, CANTERBURY, UK
Lines: 19

In article <774@harrier.ukc.ac.uk> I wrote:
>The subject line says it all. I'm familiar with 754 but until recently ...

I'd like to say thanks to all those who mailed and posted information. Here's
a summary of what I got:

The IEEE 854 standard is a radix and word-size independent version of IEEE 754.
Available from IEEE/CS and ANSI (and possibly, in the UK, from BSI).

The full title is `Radix Independant Floating Point Standard') and it is a
subset of 754 that omits details of the format and radix of the floating point
numbers, leaving things like accuracy requirements, exception handling,
not-a-numbers, and so on. It is almost the same as IEEE 754 but has somthing
like an extra definition at the start along the lines of "let b be the base
used" and a global replacement of b for 2 in the rest of the text.

Thanks again for those who posted this info.
-- 
Martin Howe                  (This posting is private, and NOT on behalf of UKC)