🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <753@polaris.UUCP>, josh@polaris.UUCP (Josh Knight) writes:
> Indeed, the proposal to use long integers is wasteful
> of the very resource that is usually in short supply in these calculations,
> namely memory (reference to all the "no virtual memory MY Cray!" verbage).
> When Ed stores the mass of a 10 solar mass star in his simulation of the
> evolution of an open cluster as a 512 bit integer, approximately 500 of
> the bits are wasted on meaningless precision.  

I guess I didn't really make myself clear in my original posting.  I
didn't mean to imply that ONLY 512 bit integers would be available, but
COULD be available, just as bytes and double-bytes are availble as
subsets of the 32-bit integers on a Vax (ooops -- sorry, Josh).
It would not be an unreasonable implementation to have registers of,
say, 128 bits, so "quad integers" of 512 bits would have to be
operated on in 4 pieces.  My point was to substitute integer operations
for floating ones and still retain workable precision.
-- 
Ed Nather
Astronomy Dept, U of Texas @ Austin
{allegra,ihnp4}!{noao,ut-sally}!utastro!nather
nather@astro.AS.UTEXAS.EDU