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Cited by 1,750

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 1 of the 1 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

What every computer scientist should know about floating-point arithmetic

Goldberg, David·1991·ACM Computing Surveys

Abstract

Floating-point arithmetic is considered as esoteric subject by many people. This is rather surprising, because floating-point is ubiquitous in computer systems: Almost every language has a floating-point datatype; computers from PCs to supercomputers have floating-point accelerators; most compilers will be called upon to compile floating-point algorithms from time to time; and virtually every operating system must respond to floating-point exceptions such as overflow. This paper presents a tutorial on the aspects of floating-point that have a direct impact on designers of computer systems. It begins with background on floating-point representation and rounding error, continues with a discussion of the IEEE floating point standard, and concludes with examples of how computer system builders can better support floating point.

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Metadata

Authors
Goldberg, D.
Venue
ACM Computing Surveys
Published
1991-03
Volume
23
Issue
1
Pages
5-48
ISSN
  • 0360-0300 (ISSN-L)
  • 1557-7341
OpenAlex
W2169004268
Cited by
1,750
References
1
FWCI
9.92
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: What every computer scientist should know about floating-point arithmetic. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1145/103162.103163
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Goldberg, D. (1991). What every computer scientist should know about floating-point arithmetic. ACM Computing Surveys. https://doi.org/10.1145/103162.103163

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Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.