The IEEE standard

The IEEE standard regulates the representation of binary floating point numbers in a computer, how to perform consistently arithmetic operations and how to handle exceptions, etc. Developed in 1980's, is now followed by virtually all microprocessor manufacturers.

Supporting IEEE standard greatly enhances programs portability. When a piece of code is moved from one IEEE-standard-supporting machine to another IEEE-standard-supporting machine, the results of the basic arithmetic operations (+,-,*,/) will be identical.