minifloat
Sign in to saveAlso known as minifloats, FP16 (half)
In computing, minifloats are floating-point values represented with very few bits. This reduced precision makes them ill-suited for general-purpose numerical calculations, but they are useful for special purposes such as: Computer graphics, where human perception of color and light levels has low precision. The 16-bit half-precision format is very popular. Machine learning, which can be relatively insensitive to numeric precision. 16-bit, 8-bit, and even 4-bit floats are increasingly being used.
~20 min read
Article
17 sectionsContents
- Notation
- Usage
- Graphics
- Microcontroller
- Machine learning
- Examples
- 8-bit (1.4.3)
- 8-bit (1.4.3) with ''B'' = −2
- 8-bit (1.3.4)
- 6-bit (1.3.2)
- 4-bit (1.2.1)
- 3-bit (1.1.1)
- 2-bit (0.1.1) and 3-bit (0.2.1)
- 1-bit (0.1.0)
- See also
- References
- External links
In computing, minifloats are floating-point values represented with very few bits. This reduced precision makes them ill-suited for general-purpose numerical calculations, but they are useful for special purposes such as: Computer graphics, where human perception of color and light levels has low precision. The 16-bit half-precision format is very popular. Machine learning, which can be relatively insensitive to numeric precision. 16-bit, 8-bit, and even 4-bit floats are increasingly being used.
Additionally, they are frequently encountered as a pedagogical tool in computer-science courses to demonstrate the properties and structures of floating-point arithmetic and IEEE 754 numbers.