Article View: comp.arch
Article #11810Re: IEEE floating point
From: Herman Rubin
Date: Sun, 26 May 1991 00:25
Date: Sun, 26 May 1991 00:25
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1457 bytes
In article <1991May25.222551.16365@zoo.toronto.edu>, henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
......................
> I will confine myself to observing that IBM hex FP is the only FP format
> I know of that made half the FP instructions -- the single-precision ones --
> just about useless to most programmers.
The IBM hex FP is not that much worse than any other FP with 32-bit words.
Some of the IEEE implementations make the 32-bit FP operations actually
more expensive than the longer ones, whereas on a machine like the CYBER 205,
especially for vectors, they are much less expensive. Of course the CYBER
quite properly calls the 32-bit ones half precision and the 64-bit ones
full precision, and the hardware does make provision for double precision.
--
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin@l.cc.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet) {purdue,pur-ee}!l.cc!hrubin(UUCP)
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!spool.mu.edu!news.nd.edu!mentor.cc.purdue.edu!pop.stat.purdue.edu!hrubin From: hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: IEEE floating point Message-ID: <12805@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> Date: 26 May 91 00:25:17 GMT Article-I.D.: mentor.12805 References: <9105250030.AA08036@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <1991May25.222551.16365@zoo.toronto.edu> Sender: news@mentor.cc.purdue.edu Lines: 19