This standard specifies formats and operations for floating-point arithmetic in computer systems. Exception conditions are defined and handling of these conditions is specified. Purpose 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.