Composite Arithmetic A: Storage Form A Proposed Draft Standard

This paper is in the form of a Draft Standard, patterned somewhat after the IEEE Standard for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic [17]. The proposals of this paper are based on a previously published paper [15] which canvasses the need for, and the possibilities of, a standard for general purpose arithmetic. The proposals of this paper relate to one of the representational forms to be used in the proposed arithmetic, the storage form. The other two representational forms, display form and register form, are proposed in companion papers, which should be read in conjunction with this paper.