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This book grew out of lecture notes for a course on floating-point computation given for several years at the IBM Systems Research Institute,
it presents floating-point arithmetic in a somewhat generalized form which allows for variations in the radix and the word length. However, instead of
striving for extreme generality, the book discusses the arithmetic o 'the IBM System/360 in detail and generalizes it where it is convenient to do so. The examples in the book refer primarily to the System/360 and to the FORTRAN and PL/I compilers currently available for it, but other machines and other compilers are discussed where appropriate. All the examples are presented in higher-level languages, so no knowledge of Assembler Language is necessary. However, it is assumed that the reader is familiar with either FORTRAN or PL/L (It is not necessary for him to be familiar with both of these languages.)
The material presented here might constitute a second course in programming for someone interested in scientific computing. A first course in programming usually concentrates on a description of language features and the use of these features in writing programs. This book discusses the details of what actually happens when floating-point arithmetic is performed during the execution of the program, and the emphasis is on the quality of the answers produced. It is my hope that, by making the reader more aware of the arithmetic that will be performed as a result of the FORTRAN statement he writes, the book will contribute to the production of better programs.
This book is directed toward two different types of readers. First, it is addressed to the obvious audience of those who are interested in using
higher-level languages to write programs which will perform floating-point computation. Second, it is also directed toward the compiler designers and machine designers who are concerned with floating-point operations. The material presented here has been found to be of interest to this group because, by illustrating the way floating-point arithmetic is used to solve problems, it leads to an understanding of the reasons for incorporating various features in the hardware and in the languages