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• floating point
  floating point

  noun

  a decimal point whose location is not fixed, used especially in computer operations.
• floating-point
  floating-point

  Relating to a method of representing numerical quantities that uses two sets of integers, a mantissa and a characteristic, in which the value of the number is understood to be equal to the mantissa multiplied by a base (often 10) raised to the power of the characteristic. Scientific notation is one means of displaying floating-point numbers.

floating point

American  

noun

1. a decimal point whose location is not fixed, used especially in computer operations.

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floating-point Scientific  

/ flō′tĭng-point′ /

1. Relating to a method of representing numerical quantities that uses two sets of integers, a mantissa and a characteristic, in which the value of the number is understood to be equal to the mantissa multiplied by a base (often 10) raised to the power of the characteristic. Scientific notation is one means of displaying floating-point numbers.

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Example Sentences

At a supercomputing conference in Germany on Monday, Intel said its forthcoming "Falcon Shores" chip will have 288 gigabytes of memory and support 8-bit floating point computation.

From Reuters • May 22, 2023

Nvidia says an H100 GPU is three times faster than its previous-generation A100 at FP16, FP32, and FP64 compute, and six times faster at 8-bit floating point math.

From The Verge • Mar. 22, 2022

The effect is of a floating point of view that narrows and widens, both deeply rendered and impossible to pin down.

From Los Angeles Times • May 20, 2021

A 64-bit floating point number representing the horizontal velocity of the rocket with respect to the platform was converted to a 16-bit signed integer, so there were 48 fewer number places.

From Slate • Oct. 31, 2019

A set of subroutines are provided with the PDP-3 to perform floating point arithmetic.

From Preliminary Specifications: Programmed Data Processor Model Three (PDP-3) October, 1960 by Digital Equipment Corporation