poster
2024-05-26, 04:48
<div class="content">Our technical support group recently received a request for a tool that would convert IBM System/360 hexadecimal floating point numbers to the IEEE-754 format. I am probably the only one left at MathWorks that actually used IBM mainframe computers. I thought we had seen the last of hexadecimal arithmetic years ago. But, it turns out that the hexadecimal floating point format is alive and well.
Contents
IBM System/360 (https://www.labfans.com/bbs/#927291b6-bb83-4c85-937c-8f20844b3c74)
Formats (https://www.labfans.com/bbs/#43cbbb43-f2f5-4415-99df-f6a6c114c912)
Data (https://www.labfans.com/bbs/#5d482994-2d0d-42fa-86e2-c98bc728ebbe)
Hex_ieee (https://www.labfans.com/bbs/#099df223-ed1e-405e-917f-0cccd1d54a26)
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Examples (https://www.labfans.com/bbs/#64f8c2ec-011c-40a2-a2f3-a2926ee929ac)
Comparison (https://www.labfans.com/bbs/#41ed0fce-64bf-4471-b2c3-e22645d184f5)
Software (https://www.labfans.com/bbs/#9e4ce83f-58b7-498d-b480-9f17c5c1f6e0)
IBM System/360
The System/360 is a family of mainframe computers that IBM introduced in 1965 and that dominated the computer industry until PCs came along twenty years later. They range in size from desk-sized to systems that fill a large room.
Here is a photo of a mid-sized model.
https://blogs.mathworks.com/cleve/files/ibm-360-60.png
System/360, Model 60. Photo from Ken Shirrif's blog, IBM 360/System Summary.
The System/360 architecture is byte-oriented, so it can handle business data processing as well as scientific and engineering computation. This leads to base-16, rather than base-2 or base-10, floating point arithmetic.
* Binary f*2^e 1/2
Contents
IBM System/360 (https://www.labfans.com/bbs/#927291b6-bb83-4c85-937c-8f20844b3c74)
Formats (https://www.labfans.com/bbs/#43cbbb43-f2f5-4415-99df-f6a6c114c912)
Data (https://www.labfans.com/bbs/#5d482994-2d0d-42fa-86e2-c98bc728ebbe)
Hex_ieee (https://www.labfans.com/bbs/#099df223-ed1e-405e-917f-0cccd1d54a26)
ieee2ibm (https://www.labfans.com/bbs/#126c1d80-75f5-4879-841f-de925f083fc1)
ibm2ieee (https://www.labfans.com/bbs/#88d3bc9c-b626-4578-872e-b95f02057e43)
Examples (https://www.labfans.com/bbs/#64f8c2ec-011c-40a2-a2f3-a2926ee929ac)
Comparison (https://www.labfans.com/bbs/#41ed0fce-64bf-4471-b2c3-e22645d184f5)
Software (https://www.labfans.com/bbs/#9e4ce83f-58b7-498d-b480-9f17c5c1f6e0)
IBM System/360
The System/360 is a family of mainframe computers that IBM introduced in 1965 and that dominated the computer industry until PCs came along twenty years later. They range in size from desk-sized to systems that fill a large room.
Here is a photo of a mid-sized model.
https://blogs.mathworks.com/cleve/files/ibm-360-60.png
System/360, Model 60. Photo from Ken Shirrif's blog, IBM 360/System Summary.
The System/360 architecture is byte-oriented, so it can handle business data processing as well as scientific and engineering computation. This leads to base-16, rather than base-2 or base-10, floating point arithmetic.
* Binary f*2^e 1/2