Golden Ruler: A Numeric Format Catalog with Bit-Exact Conformance Vectors for FP8, BF16, MXFP4, and Microscaling Formats
Numeric format proliferation in machine learning hardware -- FP8 (E4M3 and E5M2), BF16, MXFP4, microscaling block formats, and dozens of research variants -- has outpaced the availability of vendor-neutral, bit-exact reference material. Engineers porting models across accelerators encounter silent divergences that are difficult to diagnose without a shared ruler. This paper describes a catalog of 109 numeric formats spanning 12 clusters (83 at v2; the count is a catalog invariant, not a fixed number), a suite of six bit-exact conformance packs covering GF16, MXFP4 element, BF16, FP8 E4M3, FP8 E5M2, and E8M0 block scale, and an IEEE P3109 v3.2.0 cross-walk that maps each pack to its corres...
| Authors | Dmitrii Vasilev |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.AR |
| Published | 8 June 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 4 September 2026 |
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