Rick Zaccone <zaccone at bucknell.edu> writes:

>> The primary reason for denormalized numbers is to provide gradual
>> underflow.  Denormalized numbers allow for some additional values
>> between zero and the smallest normalized number greater than zero.

Quite true.  Unfortunately, using denormalization properly for gradual
under/overflow is problematic for some IEEE 754 implementations, or at
least it was a few years ago when I was last involved with this stuff.
Some implementors seemed to feel this feature was of dubious utility,
and not worth the performance impact of detecting the condition.
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"Designers are pretty bright people, however.  They can come up with a
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Bruce Cohen,                               |  email: cohenb at gemstone.com
GemStone Systems, Inc.                     |  phone: (503)533-3602
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