In simple terms, what are the major components of IEEE 754 floating-point representation?

• A. A sign bit, an exponent with a bias, and a significand representing magnitude.
• B. Only a sign bit and magnitude.
• C. Exponent stored in two's complement.
• D. Mantissa and exponent without a sign bit.

Answer: (A)

IEEE 754 uses three pieces: a sign bit, a biased exponent, and a significand (the fraction) that encodes the magnitude. For normal numbers, the value is interpreted as (-1)^sign × 1.significand × 2^(exponent − bias). The sign bit determines positive or negative, the exponent stores the power of two with a bias so negative and large exponents fit in unsigned storage, and the significand holds the precision bits (with an implicit leading 1 for normalized numbers). The other choices miss one of these essential parts or describe a different encoding (two’s complement for the exponent, or no sign bit), so they don’t match how IEEE 754 represents floating-point numbers.