Numerical Computing with IEEE Floating Point Arithmetic

by Michael L. Overton

Are you familiar with the IEEE floating point arithmetic standard? Would you like to understand it better? This book gives a broad overview of numerical computing, in a historical context, with special focus on the IEEE standard for binary floating point arithmetic. Key ideas are developed step by step, taking the reader from floating point representation, correctly rounded arithmetic, and the IEEE philosophy on exceptions, to an understanding of the crucial concepts of conditioning and stability, explained in a simple yet rigorous context. It gives technical details that are not readily available elsewhere, and includes challenging exercises that go beyond the topics covered in the text.

Genres: Computer Science, Computers

118 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Janez Perme · Rating 4 out of 5]

This piece was actually quite nice to read. Way way better to start with than Koren's book. I strongly recommend that novice begins with this title to get a broad perspective about FP notations as well as arithmetic operations. And then proceed to Koren's book if interested in further topics and deep dive. I'm ticking one star off, due to lack of solutions to exercises (why do majority of authors have to spoil their own books in this way, I wonder ?). Also, there is no description of hardware implementations of any kind. Use Koren's book for that.

[Kyle Shores · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short, elucidating examples. I loved the practicality of the book as well as the plain language. I have a much better understanding of floating point math now.