Re: [Python-ideas] Adding a half-float (16-bit) type to PEP 3118 (and possibly the struct module?)

On 3/30/2011 10:32 PM, Greg Ewing wrote:

Just out of curiosity, is the layout of numpy's float16 based on any existing standard, or is it something purely invented by numpy?

If it's a standard format, that would lend more weight to the idea of supporting it in the buffer interface.

I understood Robert Kern's statement "I think that it would be reasonable to add more when two libraries come with a solid use case, like communicating the half-floats that are standard in OpenCL and other GPU languages. " to mean that numpy adopted it from OpenCL, etc. If so, I think Python should definitely add it. -- Terry Jan Reedy