This standard specifies interchange and arithmetic formats and methods for binary and decimal floating-point arithmetic in computer programming environments. This standard specifies exception conditions and their default handling. An implementation of a floating-point system conforming to this standard may be realized entirely in software, entirely in hardware, or in any combination of software and hardware. For operations specified in the normative part of this standard, numerical results and exceptions are uniquely determined by the values of the input data, sequence of operations, and destination formats, all under user control.

This standard specifies formats and methods for floating-point arithmetic in computer systems — standard and extended functions with single, double, extended, and extendable precision — and recommends formats for data interchange. Exception conditions are defined and standard handling of these conditions is specified.

This standard provides a method for computation with floating-point numbers that will yield the same result whether the processing is done in hardware, software, or a combination of the two. The results of the computation will be identical, independent of implementation, given the same input data. Errors, and error conditions, in the mathematical processing will be reported in a consistent manner regardless of implementation.