Normalisation

When the significand of a floating point number is normalised, there is an implied leading $1$ before the stored significand.

$$01011000[..]\to 1.01011000[..]$$

By normalising floating point values, we: ?

• Gain an extra bit of precision because of the implied leading $1$.
• Ensure that there is a unique representation for values. In non-normalised form, $2.5$ can be represented as $10.1\times 2^0$, $1.01\times 2^1$ and so on.