This is also an issue in video game programming, where this lack of consistency causes issues in the implementation of replays or lockstep networking. The core

This is also an issue in video game programming, where this lack of consistency causes issues in the implementation of replays or lockstep networking. The core idea of both is to store/share the inputs for each frame, such that the game's state can be derived from them. Even small inconsistencies every frame can explode in size due to the sheer amount of frames. If you think this article is interesting, you may also be interested in learning about posits. They are an alternative to floats with better precision near 0, which, the authors claim, makes them superior for things like machine learning. Relevant to this article is the fact that they are defined to be consistent, so if they become popular this will never be an issue again. Here is an article from the authors of posit which explains its advantages. http://www.johngustafson.net/pdfs/BeatingFloatingPoint.pdf http://www.johngustafson.net/pdfs/BeatingFloatingPoint.pdf Here is a more nuanced look at posits, which explains its disadvantages. https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01959581v3/document https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01959581v3/document