COMPUTER FUNDAMENTALS

Detailed explanation-1: -A normalized mantissa has its binary point (the base-two equivalent of a decimal point) just to the left of the most significant non-zero digit. Because the binary number system has just two digits–zero and one–the most significant digit of a normalized mantissa is always a one.

Detailed explanation-2: -We say that the floating point number is normalized if the fraction is at least 1/b, where b is the base. In other words, the mantissa would be too large to fit if it were multiplied by the base. Non-normalized numbers are sometimes called denormal; they contain less precision than the representation normally can hold.