Navigating Posit Arithmetic: A Comprehensive Survey of Principles, Hardware, and Applications

The IEEE 754 Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic has long dominated real-number representation in modern computing. Posit arithmetic, a recent alternative, has garnered growing attention for its potential advantages over IEEE 754, inspiring research across academia and industry. This survey provides a detailed examination of the theoretical foundations of posits, their applications in ields such as scientiic computing and neural networks, and notable advancements in hardware implementations, including accelerators and RISC-V cores. By synthesizing these developments, this work ofers key insights and highlights opportunities for future research, providing a comprehensive resource for understanding and advancing posit arithmetic in diverse computational domains.

@article{mallasen2025Navigating,
    title = {Navigating {{Posit Arithmetic}}: {{A Comprehensive Survey}} of {{Principles}}, {{Hardware}}, and {{Applications}}},
    shorttitle = {Navigating {{Posit Arithmetic}}},
    author = {Mallas{\'e}n, David and Murillo, Raul and Botella, Guillermo and Del Barrio, Alberto Antonio},
    year = 2025,
    month = nov,
    journal = {ACM Comput. Surv.},
    volume = {58},
    number = {5},
    pages = {131:1--131:36},
    issn = {0360-0300},
    doi = {10.1145/3772284},
    urldate = {2025-11-28}
}