floating-point

adjective

float·​ing-point ˈflō-tiŋ-ˌpȯint 

variants or floating point

mathematics

: using or involving a notation in which a number is represented as a number with an absolute value between 1 and the base (see base entry 1 sense 4e(2)) multiplied by a power of the number base indicated by an exponent (as in 4.52E2 for 452 in base 10)

A floating point operation requires at least several thousand elementary binary operations.

—Geoffrey Murray

If a simple operation like multiplying floating-point numbers would require a set of instructions, then a procedure of any useful scale would involve putting many such sets of instructions together.

—Andrew Hodges

compare fixed-point, scientific notation

Examples of floating-point in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The overall maximum bandwidth of the L1 cache has doubled, as has the bandwidth to the floating-point unit (FPU) in each processor core. —Michael Justin Allen Sexton, PCMAG, 15 July 2024

As the second computer engineer hired at DEC, Bell worked on various components for the PDP-1 system, including floating-point subroutines, tape controllers, and a drum controller. —Benj Edwards, Ars Technica, 21 May 2024

Our research shows that starting at around 1016 floating-point operations per second (tens of petaflops) the superconducting computer handily becomes more power efficient than its classical cousin. —Anna Herr, IEEE Spectrum, 15 May 2024

Intel says that all that combines to produce double the AI compute of Gaudi 2 using 8-bit floating-point infrastructure that has emerged as key to training transformer models. —IEEE Spectrum, 9 Apr. 2024

Here, the problem is linear only when the measurements are not quantized with full precision of floating-point numbers. —Dan Goodin, Ars Technica, 23 Jan. 2024

There are several accessories meant to extend the Book 8088's capabilities; there's an open socket for an Intel 8087 floating-point coprocessor, a Sound Blaster-compatible sound card accessory from Yamaha, and an external dongle with three slots for ISA expansion cards. —Andrew Cunningham, Ars Technica, 19 May 2023

The big change from the last set of training benchmarks was that the company had enabled Gaudi 2’s 8-bit floating-point (FP8) capabilities. —IEEE Spectrum, 12 Nov. 2023

One of the main problems is that floating-point accuracy is pretty consistent no matter how big or small the number. —IEEE Spectrum, 7 Sep. 2023

Word History

First Known Use

1948, in the meaning defined above

Kids Definition

floating-point

adjective

: involving or being a system of representing numbers (as in computer programming) in which a quantity is written as a number multiplied by a power of that number's base

999.9 can be expressed in a floating-point system as 9.999 × 10²