Question

The accuracy of the floating point numbers representable in two 16 bit words of a computer is approximately.

• A. $16$ digits
• B. $6$ digits
• C. $4$ digits
• D. All of the above
• E. None of the above

Answer 1

The correct option is B $6$ digits

The accuracy is 6 digits.

Here, the total number of bits is 32 and according to IEEE754 representation format if we want to represent a floating point number with single precision(32 bit) then all bits will be divided into 3 parts -

1) sign bit = 1 bit,

2) exponent = 8 bit and

3) fraction = 23 bit.

Example = 0.15625

IEEE754 single precision representation -

00111110001000000000000000000000

where,

sign bit = 0

exponent = 01111100

fraction = 01000000000000000000000