Binary integer decimal

The IEEE 754-2008 standard includes decimal floating-point number formats in which the significand and the exponent (and the payloads of NaNs) can be encoded in two ways, referred to as binary encoding and decimal encoding.

Both formats break a number down into a sign bit s, an exponent q (between q_min and q_max), and a p-digit significand c (between 0 and 10^p−1). The value encoded is (−1)^s×10^q×c. In both formats the range of possible values is identical, but they differ in how the significand c is represented. In the decimal encoding, it is encoded as a series of p decimal digits (using the densely packed decimal (DPD) encoding). This makes conversion to decimal form efficient, but requires a specialized decimal ALU to process. In the binary integer decimal (BID) encoding, it is encoded as a binary number.