How to convert from floating point binary to decimal in half precision(16 bits)?

I'm trying to convert a 16 bit precision binary number to decimal format however I am completely failing to do so.

The binary I'm trying to convert is $0101011101010000$ My current method is:

Separation: $0|10101|1101010000$

Sign = 0

Mantissa = $1.1101010000$

Exponent = $21 - (2^4 - 1) = 6 $

Mantissa Denormalised = $1110101.0000$

This gives an answer of 117. Is this actually correct or am I making a mistake in my method?

Solution 1:

You are right.

You can do that automatically with python and numpy :

import numpy as np
import struct
a=struct.pack("H",int("0101011101010000",2))
np.frombuffer(a, dtype =np.float16)[0]

and you get : 117.0

Solution 2:

Your formula produces the correct result 117.0 in this case but it may fail for subnormal numbers, for NaNs, for +/- infinity.

>>> float_from_unsigned16(int("0101011101010000", 2))
117.0

where float_from_unsigned16(n) (in Python):

def float_from_unsigned16(n):
    assert 0 <= n < 2**16
    sign = n >> 15
    exp = (n >> 10) & 0b011111
    fraction = n & (2**10 - 1)
    if exp == 0:
        if fraction == 0:
            return -0.0 if sign else 0.0
        else:
            return (-1)**sign * fraction / 2**10 * 2**(-14)  # subnormal
    elif exp == 0b11111:
        if fraction == 0:
            return float('-inf') if sign else float('inf')
        else:
            return float('nan')
    return (-1)**sign * (1 + fraction / 2**10) * 2**(exp - 15)

See binary16.py