简单来说是有特别的标志位。Wiki上是这么说的:
In IEEE 754 standard-conforming floating-point storage formats, NaNs are identified by specific, pre-defined bit patterns unique to NaNs. The sign bit does not matter. Binary format NaNs are represented with the exponential field filled with ones (like infinity values), and some non-zero number in the significand field (to make them distinct from infinity values). The original IEEE 754 standard from 1985 (IEEE 754-1985) only described binary floating-point formats, and did not specify how the signaling/quiet state was to be tagged. In practice, the most significant bit of the significand field determined whether a NaN is signaling or quiet. Two different implementations, with reversed meanings, resulted:
most processors (including those of the Intel and AMD's x86 family, the Motorola 68000 family, the AIM PowerPC family, the ARM family, the Sun SPARC family, and optionally new MIPS processors) set