AI engineering glossary · Computing foundations
What is machine epsilon?
Machine epsilon: The gap between 1.0 and the next larger number a given floating-point format can represent, which measures the format's relative rounding precision. For 64-bit floats it is about 2.2 times ten to the power minus 16.
Machine epsilon: an example
In NumPy, np.finfo(float).eps returns about 2.22e-16.
Related terms
More Computing foundations terms
- Memory bandwidth
- Memory hierarchy
- Memory leak
- Metadata
- MIME type
- Moore's law
- Multiprocessing
- Multithreading
Where you learn it
Machine epsilon is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.