Editor's Note: This is the first article in a two-part series on decimal representations and decimal arithmetic in general, and on Binary Coded Decimal (BCD) in particular. In this first installment, ...

[Editor's note: For an intro to fixed-point math, see Fixed-Point DSP and Algorithm Implementation. For a comparison of fixed- and floating-point hardware, see Fixed vs. floating point: a surprisingly ...

In the computer, all data are represented as binary digits (bits), and eight binary digits make up one byte. For example, the upper case letter A is 0101001. Numbers however can take several forms.

Floating point encodes an approximation of proper base 2 arithmetic. Or do you really believe that 0.1 + 0.2 isn't equal to 0.3 for some reason? Click to expand... It encodes (i) a base two mantissa; ...