16-bit float data type.

Question

Does anyone have any experience with using the 16-bit floating-point type in an application. This relatively new data type is used in computer graphics. It's defined by several specs: OpenEXR, DirectX and the new IEEE-754 2008 standard.

At WinHEC 2008 Microsoft's Chas Boyd had a presentation evangelizing this data type. (I wasn't there, but I saw the slide deck.) "float-16 is the new byte".

My questions are: is anyone using this data type for anything outside of DirectX textures?

If so, why? What is you application doing?

If so, do you require full IEEE support, including denomals, NaNs and #Inf?

Answer 1

I have encountered this type in the DSP libraries for uclinux, including a software implementation of all major operations. It is very nice for 8 and 16 bit processors, far easier to handle in software than 32 bit or larger types.