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by _nalply
1747 days ago
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My curiosity got piqued at the mention of CFP8 (configurable floating point 8), but googling this didn't yield usable information. What exactly is CFP8? How many bits does one instance of CFP8 use? What mathematical operations are supported? How does one configure the floating point? |
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https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2018/04/11/anatomy-of-a-posit...
Perhaps CFP8 are parameterized 8-bit posits where the parameter is the value es. The larger es is, the greater the dynamic range is at the expense of precision. Two examples:
posit<8, 0> (es = 0) has as largest positive number 64 and the smallest positive number 1/64.
posit<8, 1> (es = 1) has as largest positive number 4012 and the smallest positive number 1/4012.
The formula for the largest positive number for 8-bit posits is:
2 ^ 2 ^ es ^ 6.
posits don't have NaNs and only one infinity (±∞), so they can use more of the 8 bit values for numbers than floating point numbers.
I wonder: is CFP8 = posit<8, es>?