[fitsbits] 16-bit floats {External}

[jaffe]

Whether a FITS storage format is supported by any programming language, 
or even any machine processor architecture is irrelevant, FITS is a 
transport standard.  If half-precision FP is accepted into the FITS 
standard, this implies that the FITS reader/writers for any language or 
architecture have to be adapted to convert the FITS data into a locally 
functional format, e.g. 32-bit FP if local 16-bit FP is not supported.

Walter

On 2025-07-23 20:11, Lucio Chiappetti via fitsbits wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Jul 2025, Barrett, Paul via fitsbits wrote:
> 
>> Yes, definitely. I have been advocating for half-precision (16-bit) 
>> floating point for several years now for radio astronomy. In addition, 
>> 128-bit floats
> 
> Are these formats supported by any major programming language ?
> 
> Is it worth supporting "exotic" formats, which might be suitable for 
> some niche application, when most data producers often use improperly 
> 64-bit all the times, even when overshoot ?
> 
> Historically FITS went the other way round (concentrating on 16 and 32, 
> later 64, when mainframres with 36 or 60 bits were around).
> 
> _______________________________________________
> fitsbits mailing list
> fitsbits at listmgr.nrao.edu
> https://listmgr.nrao.edu/mailman/listinfo/fitsbits