[jlgustafson]

Sorry to be late to this discussion. Please be aware that there are a number of variations of the original posit definition that preserve the elegant properties (2's complement negation, perfect reciprocals of the integer powers of 2, etc.) but correct the loss of accuracy at extreme magnitudes. By using 3 exponent bits instead of 2, and limiting the number of regime bits to a maximum of 6, you get a dynamic range of about 1e–15 to 1e15 that is independent of the precision and has a quire with only 256 bits. The decoding is MUCH simpler when the regime is limited... we're seeing about 40% reduction in circuit area.

I call these "b-posits" for bounded posits. They are described in Chapters 6 and 13 of my latest book, Every Bit Counts: Posit Computing.