Beyond the (standard) floating point computations – what’s new, what’s interesting, what’s useful?

Boguslaw Cyganek

60 minute presentation
beginner
intermediate
advanced
12:30-13:30, Friday, 2nd July 2021

Whenever we see fractionals we automatically pick the floating-point (FP) data types, such as float or double. However, is it always optimal? What other choices we have? Are there any other standards than the IEEE 754 FP? In this talk I’ll present such topics as:

  • Brief intro to the FP IEEE 754 standard, its pros, cons and pitfalls.
  • How can we compress floating point data – shorter formats, lossless & lossy compressions, new ZFP and SZ methods and their use in C++.
  • A new kid on the block – the POSIT arithmetic and how to use it.
  • Intro to the relevant C++ libraries and – as always – a lot of practical examples.

Everybody is invited ;)

Boguslaw Cyganek

I'm a researcher and lecturer at the Department of Electronics, AGH University of Science and Technology in Cracow, Poland. I worked as a software engineer for a number of companies in USA, UK, Germany and Poland. For the recent years I have been conducting research in AI and teaching C++ at the AGH University. Currently I'm finishing the book entitled “Introduction to Programming with C++ for Engineers”.