Floating Point: The Origin Story

Floating point arithmetic is a crucial part of modern computing. A large proportion of the silicon currently being installed consists of ‘floating point units’ and floating point standards continue to emerge to meet the needs of modern machine learning.But where did floating point arithmetic come from and where was it first implemented? Perhaps surprisingly it can trace its beginnings to the origins of the development of the computing universe as we know it today ….By NASA’s James Webb Space Tel...