Exact decoding and destination quantization of standard MX blocks #
Finite lane decoding is exact multiplication by the shared power of two. Saturating block quantization minimizes each lane's absolute error among all finite words at the selected scale. The result applies at subnormal and binade boundaries as well as outside the element range.
Exact rational meaning of scaling a finite lane.
A positive power-of-two scale preserves the sign, including the sign of zero.
Finite lane decoding is exact multiplication, without binary32 range truncation.
A finite shared scale preserves an element infinity and its sign.
A finite shared scale preserves a lane-local NaN without changing adjacent lanes.
The generic decoder retains every lane when the block has a finite vector observation.
Finite numerical element values remain exact after applying a shared scale.
Both explicit element overflow modes refine their numerical contract.
Automatic shared-scale conversion satisfies the standard destination relation.
At a finite selected scale, SAT minimizes the decoded absolute error of each lane among all finite element encodings.