Wednesday, September 02, 2009 7:03 PM,

A student writes



	Professor Patt,
	In problem 8, what does the "x" signify? 
	Does it just signify hexadecimal notation?

	Thanks,
	<<name withheld to protect the student who wants to be what x is>>



Thank you for the quick email.  Once again, in my infinite optimism, I thought 
I would be able to complete the discussion on floating point, and also talk 
about hex notation and logical operations ...and get it all done today.

Surprise, surprise!  So, we will move problems 8 and 9 to the 2nd problem set. 

In answer to your direct question, yes x signifies hex notation.  For example 
xABCD is 1010101111001101, i.e., 1010 1011 1100 1101. 

Back to the problem set.  Instead, please do the following two problems to 
demonstrate you know how to go between the floating point representation and 
the value represented.

New Problem 8. Express the value 0.3 in the 32-bit floating point format that 
we discussed in class today.  Feel free to only show fraction bits [22:15], 
rather than all the fraction bits, [22:0].  Notation: The symbol [22:15] 
signifies all 8 bits from bit 22 to bit 15.  

New Problem 9. Convert the following floating point representation to its 
decimal equivalent:



		1 10000010  10101001100000000000000



Incidentally, I am going to try to generate another email tonight dealing with 
conversion to floating point which may help you with problem 8.  Stay tuned.

Yale Patt