Extended precision

Not to be confused with arbitrary-precision arithmetic.
Floating-point formats
IEEE 754
Other
Alternatives
Tapered floating point
Computer architecture bit widths
Bit
Application
Binary floating-point precision
Decimal floating-point precision

Extended precision refers to floating-point number formats that provide greater precision than the basic floating-point formats.[1] Extended-precision formats support a basic format by minimizing roundoff and overflow errors in intermediate values of expressions on the base format. In contrast to extended precision, arbitrary-precision arithmetic refers to implementations of much larger numeric types (with a storage count that usually is not a power of two) using special software (or, rarely, hardware).

  1. ^ IEEE 754 (2008, ¶ 2.1.21) defines extended precision format as "A format that extends a supported basic format by providing wider precision and range."