Question

What is the largest floating point number that can be represented using a 32-bit word?

(a) 3*10^38

(b) 1.7*10^38

(c) 0.2*10^38

(d) 0.3*10^38

I had been asked this question by my college director while I was bunking the class.

My question is from Representation of Numbers topic in portion Discrete Time Systems Implementation of Digital Signal Processing

Answer 1

Correct choice is (b) 1.7*10^38

Explanation: Let the mantissa be represented by 23 bits plus a sign bit and let the exponent be represented by 7 bits plus a sign bit.