Universal Number Library

Abstract

This floating-point arithmetic library contains a software implementation of Universal Numbers (unums) as described by John Gustafson [1]. The unum format is a superset of IEEE 754 floating point with several advantages. Computing with unums provides more accurate answers without rounding errors, underflow or overflow. In contrast to fixed-sized IEEE numbers, a variable number of bits can be used to encode unums. This all allows number with only a few significant digits or with a small dynamic range to be represented more compactly.