09/20/2006

 
A student writes:


        Hey Dr. Patt

Hey student!

        I have a quick question. If the bias is not specified should we use 127
        for 8-bits?

        Thanks

        <<name withheld to protect the student with a quick question>>

If you are talking about Problem 3 on the current problem set, the BIAS was
implicitly specified.  Note it says IEEE Floating Point.  The IEEE Floating
Point standard specifies that if the exponent is 8 bits wide, the BIAS is
127.  So, yes, 127.

Good luck with the rest of the problem set.

Yale Patt