Extended-precision

Extended-precision floating point numbers have the following format on the Intel386 microprocessor:

79	78	64	63	0
SIGN	EXPONENT		FRACTION
			^
			binary point

For extended precision, bit 63 is always a 1, and the decimal point comes after this bit. The other formats have an implicit bit 1 before the fraction, as explained in ``Normalized numbers''.

Field	Position	Full name
sign	79	sign bit (0==positive, 1==negative)
exponent	78-64	exponent (biased by 16,383)
fraction	63-0	fraction (bit 63=1, followed by the
		decimal point. Bits 62-0 are the fraction.