1. An electronic device comprising: a data processor; and encoding logic instructions stored on a computer-readable memory and configured to be executed by the data processor to: represent all not-a-number (NaN) values exclusively with a common representation that comprises a single predetermined sequence of ones and zeros; wherein said common representation for representing the different NaN values is one of multiple representations in the IEEE 754 standard for representing NaN values, thereby freeing up other representations from said multiple representations to be used for representing non-NaN values, and wherein the encoding logic instructions are further configured to: use said other representations to represent non-NaN values.