What is the significance of 1.000000015047466e+30?
I was attempting to do JIT compilation on a pytorch-based module from an NLP library and I saw that one of the generated fused CUDA kernel code implementations mentions the number 1.000000015047466e+30:
#define NAN __int_as_float(0x7fffffff)
#define POS_INFINITY __int_as_float(0x7f800000)
#define NEG_INFINITY __int_as_float(0xff800000)


template&lt;typename T&gt;
__device__ T maximum(T a, T b) {
  return isnan(a) ? a : (a &gt; b ? a : b);
}

template&lt;typename T&gt;
__device__ T minimum(T a, T b) {
  return isnan(a) ? a : (a &lt; b ? a : b);
}

extern &quot;C&quot; __global__
void fused_add_mul_mul_sub(float* tattn_mask1_1, float* tac_2, float* tbd_2, float* output_1, float* aten_mul_1) {
{
if (blockIdx.x&lt;1ll ? 1 : 0) {
if ((long long)(threadIdx.x) + 512ll * (long long)(blockIdx.x)&lt;169ll ? 1 : 0) {
if (blockIdx.x&lt;1ll ? 1 : 0) {
        float v = __ldg(tattn_mask1_1 + (long long)(threadIdx.x) + 512ll * (long long)(blockIdx.x));
        aten_mul_1[(long long)(threadIdx.x) + 512ll * (long long)(blockIdx.x)] = v * 1.000000015047466e+30f;
      }    }  }if ((long long)(threadIdx.x) + 512ll * (long long)(blockIdx.x)&lt;2028ll ? 1 : 0) {
    float v_1 = __ldg(tac_2 + (long long)(threadIdx.x) + 512ll * (long long)(blockIdx.x));
    float v_2 = __ldg(tbd_2 + 12ll * (((long long)(threadIdx.x) + 512ll * (long long)(blockIdx.x)) % 169ll) + ((long long)(threadIdx.x) + 512ll * (long long)(blockIdx.x)) / 169ll);
    float v_3 = __ldg(tattn_mask1_1 + ((long long)(threadIdx.x) + 512ll * (long long)(blockIdx.x)) % 169ll);
    output_1[(long long)(threadIdx.x) + 512ll * (long long)(blockIdx.x)] = (v_1 + v_2) * 0.125f - v_3 * 1.000000015047466e+30f;
  }}
}

It feels like this should be some sort of FLOAT_MAX constant, but I don't know any numerical type that would have this as a limit.
Google searching for this constant just yields a handful of results that seem to suggest it may be a physical constant of some kind:

This MATLAB forum link suggests it may be a default value for some physical phenomena
This Github repo on whole cell electrophysiology seems to use it as a max limit of some kind.
This Opensea NFT link shows that the number is somehow used as a parameter for some kind of fractal art?

I'm absolutely baffled because I'm doing natural language processing using CUDA and have absolutely no clue why this number is appearing in my CUDA kernel code and why it's also being used in hard science research code. Does this number have some special floating point properties or something? Is it serving as a numerical stability factor somehow? Any leads would be greatly appreciated.

1.000000015047466e+30f is 1030 rounded to the nearest value representable in float (IEEE-754 binary32, also called “single precision”), then rounded to 16 decimal digits, then formatted as a float literal.
Thus, it likely originated as 1e30 or another representation of 1030 that was subsequently converted to float and then used to produce new source code.
(The float nearest 1030 is exactly 1000000015047466219876688855040.)
