The Java® Virtual Machine Specification, Java SE 7 Edition, Third Edition

2.8. Floating-Point Arithmetic

The Java Virtual Machine incorporates a subset of the floating-point arithmetic specified in IEEE Standard for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic (ANSI/IEEE Std.754-1985, New York).

2.8.1. Java Virtual Machine Floating-Point Arithmetic and IEEE 754

The key differences between the floating-point arithmetic supported by the Java Virtual Machine and the IEEE 754 standard are:

• The floating-point operations of the Java Virtual Machine do not throw exceptions, trap, or otherwise signal the IEEE 754 exceptional conditions of invalid operation, division by zero, overflow, underflow, or inexact. The Java Virtual Machine has no signaling NaN value.

• The Java Virtual Machine does not support IEEE 754 signaling floating-point ...