The
IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic (
IEEE 754) is a
technical standard for
floating-point computation established in 1985 by the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Many hardware
floating point units use the IEEE 754 standard. The standard addressed many problems found in the diverse floating point implementations that made them difficult to use reliably and portably. The current version,
IEEE 754-2008 published in August 2008, includes nearly all of the original
IEEE 754-1985 standard and the IEEE Standard for
Radix-Independent Floating-Point Arithmetic (
IEEE 854-1987). The international standard
ISO/IEC/IEEE 60559:2011 (with content identical to IEEE 754-2008) has been approved for adoption through
JTC1/SC 25 under the ISO/IEEE PSDO Agreement and published.