this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
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STOP DOING SCIENCE
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Ok but actually though, can someone explain why we can't use integers to emulate floats. Why is there a dedicated fpu
Let's say our integers are 64 bit, say we put half before the point. Now our largest value is just below 4 294 967 296, a 32 bit float goes to 3.4*10^38. The representation also enables some operations to be faster (multiplication, division iirc).
Floats have a wider range, at the cost of not having full coverage over that range. Even the integers in that range cannot be exactly represented