> 9 years ago, I shared this as an April Fools joke here on HN.

That's fun.

> It seems that life is imitating art.

You didn't even beat wikipedia to the punch. They've had a nice page about minifloats using 6-8 bit sizes as examples for about 20 years.

The 4 bit section is newer, but it actually follows IEEE rules. Your joke formats forgot there's an implied 1 bit in the fraction. And how exponents work.

Lowest I've used is 8 bit floats for time delays, in embedded devices.

Interesting! I have been using integers or f32 for that. What was the use case specifically? Did you write a software float for it? I remember writing a `f16` type for an IC that used that was a pain!

Tight memory constraint. I was putting configuration somewhere it shouldn't have been, but it meant we didn't need to buy an extra chip.

Yes, purely software.

I especially like your HQQ precision

I think it is only a matter of time before HQQ / 1FP takes over. It's the logical conclusion. I hope to be using my 96-blade razor by then too

Another attempt includes Tom 7's binary3 format [1].

[1] https://tom7.org/nand/