Real32

[Skyb0rg007]

Description

Single precision IEEE floating point numbers often have sufficient precision for many applications, and are used in many binary formats. Additionally, SML/NJ stores Real64.real values as pointers, and the 32-bit variant could potentially have an unboxed representation for additional speed and space savings (on 64-bit installations).

Half-precision IEEE floating point numbers can sometimes be useful as a binary storage format (ex. CBOR), and the 16-bit brain floating point format has support on some processors and is used in some AI applications. These are also options to support (at least for serialization/deserialization to Real64).

Real32 is currently supported by MLton, MLj, and SML.NET.