JavaOne 2026 Session

Summary

Since the original release in 1995, the Java platform has supported `float` and 'double` floating-point types, and the`java.math` package added in JDK 1.1 included `BigDecimal` and `BigInteger` as library types. Together with other library changes along the way, the set of numeric types in the Java platform has been stable many years.

Scientific and engineering computation relies on linear algebra and complex numbers, while machine learning benefits from computing on smaller numeric types including 16-bit floating-point numbers and with *8-bit* floating-point formats for machine learning under consideration for standardization.

This talk will discuss ways to provide full support for new numeric types in the Java platform.