GATE | GATE CS 2012 | Question 7

The decimal value 0.5 in IEEE single precision floating point representation has
(A) fraction bits of 000…000 and exponent value of 0
(B) fraction bits of 000…000 and exponent value of −1
(C) fraction bits of 100…000 and exponent value of 0
(D) no exact representation


Answer: (B)

Explanation: The IEEE 754 standard specifies following distribution of bits:
Sign bit: 1 bit
Exponent width: 8 bits
Significand or Fraction: 24 (23 explicitly stored)

0.5 in base 10 means 1 X 2^-1 in base 2.

So exponent bits have value -1 and all fraction bits are 0.

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