In recent years, the software of automotive control systems has become increasingly large and complex to meet numerous requirements for system functionality and performance. As a result, it is very difficult to develop large programs, especially for RISC architectures, in assembly language. Consequently, high level languages (primarily C) and compilers have become more involved in the development of control programs for embedded control systems. One of the advantages of compiler involvement in software development is the ability to initiate aggressive global program-level optimizations. We propose one such optimization for increasing the performance of real number computation in automotive control systems by designing a new software-oriented floating-point format. In our proposed format, the number representation is specifically designed for automotive control programs that use software emulation rather than hardware resources. Since the proposed format is integrated within compiler technology, it offers a seamless method for creating new performance opportunities for an increasing number of embedded systems. We present an analysis of the characteristics of our proposed floating-point format and examine the effectiveness of the format integrated in an existing compiler to improve performance.