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skybrian 7 months ago

A small minority, but apparently it includes all the floats you’re likely to use. It seems the insight is that you only need 8 bits of exponent in most cases. (And single-precision floating point only has 8 bits of exponent.)

Most double-precision floats are never used because they have high exponents.

bee_rider 7 months ago | parent | next [-]

Got take, but a double with only 8 bits of exponent actually seems kind of nice, you get the extra precision but it can be cast down to a single and you only lose precision; you don’t have values that are outside the range of singles.

pansa2 7 months ago | parent | prev [-]

> A small minority, but apparently it includes all the floats you’re likely to use.

Sorry, I meant a small minority need to be boxed - all the floats you're likely to use can remain unboxed.