Denormal Numbers

A normalized number is a number for which both the exponent (including bias) and the most significant bit of the mantissa are non-zero. For such numbers, all the bits of the mantissa contribute to the precision of the representation.

The smallest normalized single-precision floating-point number greater than zero is about 1.1754943-38. Smaller numbers are possible, but those numbers must be represented with a zero exponent and a mantissa whose leading bit(s) are zero, which leads to a loss of precision. These numbers are called denormalized numbers or denormals (newer specifications refer to these as subnormal numbers).

Denormal computations use hardware and/or operating system resourcesto handle denormals; these can cost hundreds of clock cycles.

There are several ways to avoid denormals and increase the performance of your application:

See Also