Comment by piadodjanho

In practice, subnormal are very rarely used. Most compiler disable subnormals when compiling with anything other than -O0. It takes over a hundred cycle to complete an operation.

Demo: #include <stdio.h>

    int
    main ()
    {
    
        volatile float v;
        float acc = 0;
        float den = 1.40129846432e-45;
    
        for (size_t i; i < (1ul<<33); i++) {
            acc += den;
        }
    
        v = acc;
    
        return 0;
    }

With -01: $ gcc float.c -o float -O1 && time ./float ./float 8.93s user 0.00s system 99% cpu 8.933 total

With -O0: $ gcc float.c -o float -O1 && time ./float ./float 20.60s user 0.00s system 99% cpu 20.610 total