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A comment on Posit floating point numbers: thin triangles and other tricks (2019). Parent comment

Re:Posit floating point numbers: thin triangles and other tr... by thfuran on Thursday June 19, 2025 @04:03PM (#44322052)
What should happen if you divide 1 by 0?
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Re:Posit floating point numbers: thin triangles and other tr... by dnautics on Thursday June 19, 2025 @04:56PM (#44322472)
inf
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Re:Posit floating point numbers: thin triangles and other tr... by thfuran on Thursday June 19, 2025 @06:20PM (#44323057)
That's not really a number either. But what about 0/0?
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Re:Posit floating point numbers: thin triangles and other tr... by kbolino on Thursday June 19, 2025 @08:23PM (#44323755)
It seems that posits have a value called NaR ("not a real") which serves the purpose of all the special values (including both infinities) in IEEE floats. There are some key differences though:

  NaR (posits)                 NaN (floats)
  ------------                 ------------
  one bit pattern              many different bit patterns
  always equal to itself       never equals itself
  less than all other values   falsifies all orderings
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Re:Posit floating point numbers: thin triangles and other tr... by dnautics on Monday June 23, 2025 @05:35PM (#44360401)
It's a mode you can turn on that substitutes inf for NaR.
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