# Why no Float type alias?

**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-no-float-type-alias/87947
**Category:** General Usage
**Tags:** question, type
**Created:** [September 28, 2022, 7:20pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-no-float-type-alias/87947 "2022-09-28T19:20:23Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 11

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### Author: ![Palli](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/palli/32/3380_2.png) [@Palli](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Palli)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2022, 9:56pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-no-float-type-alias/87947/11 "2022-09-28T21:56:31Z")

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It was a valid question, and to not necropost on the other, which I didn’t recall, I do support Julia explicit (about size) and I might make a type P16, because I think Posit16 might be a happy medium of sizes (see SoftPostit.jl), but not as an alias of Posit16, but with my own extension of it (base 30), stay tuned…

Some background (right now I’m focused on smaller floats for neural networks, but general purpose might needs Posit16, with or without my twist):

> [@RFC: Compressed (base-6) floating point, taking 1/8 the space (new plan 1/64 compression for neural networks)](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/rfc-compressed-base-6-floating-point-taking-1-8-the-space-new-plan-1-64-compression-for-neural-networks/87289):
>
> I’ll likely be making a package later, but this may already be useful for someone. I though about posting under performance category, but so far decided against, since I’m not (yet) asking for tuning advice, but this would of course help others, with performance; memory-bandwidth. I’ll first show the (potential) downsides. Likely fixed by B. when bug found. A. julia\> decode\_8(encode\_8((-0.0, 12.0, 3.0, 4.0, 12.0, 3.0, 5.0, 1/3))) (0.0, 12.0, 3.0, 4.0, 12.0, 3.0, 5.0, 0.3333333333333333) You …

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