THE DECIMAL POINT

A Decimal Floating-Point Specification

E v e n though decimal ar i thmet ic i s pervasive in financial and commercial transactions, computers are s td l implement ing almost all arithmetic calculations using binary ar i thmet ic . A s chip real estate becomes cheaper it i s becoming likely tha t more computer m a n ufacturers will provide processors wi th decimal arithme t i c engines. Programming languages and databases are expandi...

Decimal Floating-Point: Algorism for Computers

Origins of decimal arithmetic • Decimal (base 10) arithmetic has been used for thousands of years • Algorism (Indo-Arabic place value system) in use since 800 AD • Many early computers were decimal Decimal computation today • Pervasive in financial, commercial, and human-centric applications – often a legal requirement • Benchmarks do not reflect actual use • 55% of numeric data in databases ar...

Design Exploration for Decimal Floating-Point Arithmetic

Commercial applications and databases typically store numerical data in decimal format. Currently, however, microprocessors do not provide instructions or hardware support for decimal floating-point arithmetic [ 1 ]. Consequently, decimal numbers are often read into computers, converted to binary numbers, and then processed using binary floating-point arithmetic. Results are then converted back...

Software implementation of the IEEE 754R decimal floating-point arithmetic

Decimal floating-point support on the IBM System z10 processor

The latest IBM zSeriest processor, the IBM System z10e processor, provides hardware support for the decimal floating-point (DFP) facility that was introduced on the IBM System z9t processor. The z9t processor implements the facility with a mixture of low-level software and hardware assists. Recently, the IBM POWER6e processor-based System pe 570 server introduced a hardware implementation of th...