IEEE Floating-Point Standard
The IEEE Standard specifies:
(1) The format for floating-point operands
(2) The accuracy of arithmetic results for addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, square-root generation, obtaining remainders, and comparison operations.
(3) Conversion between integers and floating-point numbers
(4) Conversion between different floating-point formats as specified in the standard
(5) Conversion between binary floating-point numbers and decimal numbers
(6) Floating-point exceptions
It has three major considerations:
(1) The format of the floating-point numbers
(2) The accuracy of the arithmetic computations
(3) The handling of exception conditions