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typesfloating-pointdoubleieee-754

Biggest integer that can be stored in a double

What is the biggest "no-floating" integer that can be stored in an IEEE 754 double type without losing precision?

In other words, at would the follow code fragment return:

UInt64 i = 0;
Double d = 0;

while (i == d)
{
        i += 1; 
        d += 1;
}
Console.WriteLine("Largest Integer: {0}", i-1);
Solution

  • The biggest/largest integer that can be stored in a double without losing precision is the same as the largest possible value of a double. That is, DBL_MAX or approximately 1.8 × 10308 (if your double is an IEEE 754 64-bit double). It's an integer, and it's represented exactly.

    What you might want to know instead is what the largest integer is, such that it and all smaller integers can be stored in IEEE 64-bit doubles without losing precision. An IEEE 64-bit double has 52 bits of mantissa, so it's 253 (and -253 on the negative side):

    • 253 + 1 cannot be stored, because the 1 at the start and the 1 at the end have too many zeros in between.
    • Anything less than 253 can be stored, with 52 bits explicitly stored in the mantissa, and then the exponent in effect giving you another one.
    • 253 obviously can be stored, since it's a small power of 2.

    Or another way of looking at it: once the bias has been taken off the exponent, and ignoring the sign bit as irrelevant to the question, the value stored by a double is a power of 2, plus a 52-bit integer multiplied by 2exponent − 52. So with exponent 52 you can store all values from 252 through to 253 − 1. Then with exponent 53, the next number you can store after 253 is 253 + 1 × 253 − 52. So loss of precision first occurs with 253 + 1.