Re:C++ proposal: There are 8 bits in a byte
by tialaramex on Friday October 18, 2024 @05:27AM
(#41877684)
Note that this type (which Rust will/ does in nightly call "f16" and a C-like language would probably name "half") is not the only popular 16-bit floating point type, as some people want to have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bfloat16_floating-point_format
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Re:C++ proposal: There are 8 bits in a byte
by adrian_b on Saturday October 19, 2024 @03:23AM
(#41886241)
The IEEE FP16 format is what is useful in graphics applications, e.g. for storing color values.
The Google BF16 format is useful strictly only for machine learning/AI applications, because its low precision is insufficient for anything else. BF16 has very low precision, but an exponent range equal to FP32, which makes overflows and underflows less likely.