Floating Point: The Origin Story

Floating point arithmetic, essential to modern computing and machine learning, has a history that traces back to early implementations. The origin story of floating point units and standards reveals how they evolved to meet the demands of contemporary AI workloads.

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 …