Ugh having an explicit bit prior to the decimal was a mistake intel made in x87 - it introduces a pile of horror as there end up being multiple representations of the vast majority of numbers, which means you have to normalize prior to any comparison operation, or accept the your comparisons may be wrong
The explicit leading bit directly halves the space of addressable bits (which is how you get space for multiple representations)
If you want insight to how awful this is, x87 has pseudo infinities, pseudo /nans/, unnormal values, and pseudo denormals
The solution intel eventually took was to recognize that the leading bit was useless but require it to be as though it were implicit and treat any case where that is wrong as being invalid.
So yes you do want a format that requires normalization, because the alternative is one that requires normalization anyway, but is also insane for any kind of comparison, and wastes precision needlessly.
The explicit leading bit directly halves the space of addressable bits (which is how you get space for multiple representations)
If you want insight to how awful this is, x87 has pseudo infinities, pseudo /nans/, unnormal values, and pseudo denormals
The solution intel eventually took was to recognize that the leading bit was useless but require it to be as though it were implicit and treat any case where that is wrong as being invalid.
So yes you do want a format that requires normalization, because the alternative is one that requires normalization anyway, but is also insane for any kind of comparison, and wastes precision needlessly.