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From: emjej@uokvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.6809
Subject: Re: BASIC09 floating point faster than C
Message-ID: <3500054@uokvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 29-Nov-84 14:05:00 EST
Article-I.D.: uokvax.3500054
Posted: Thu Nov 29 14:05:00 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Dec-84 04:49:47 EST
References: <2314@ihnss.UUCP>
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Nf-ID: #R:ihnss:-231400:uokvax:3500054:000:1481
Nf-From: uokvax!emjej    Nov 29 13:05:00 1984

/***** uokvax:net.micro.6809 / ihnss!knudsen /  9:18 pm  Nov 26, 1984 */
This is so crazy that I'm almost afraid to post it.  It appears that the
same program runs faster in Basic09 than in Microware C (both on a Coco).

	However, C and Basic09 both use 32-bit floats (I declared everything
float, not double in C), and I'd expect C to be at least as fast as Basic09.
What UNIVAC I (c. 1950) did Microware steal their floating point operators
from for C?  Should they take the guys across the hall in the Basic09 dept.
out for a few beers and borrow their floating +-*/ ?  mike k
/* ---------- */

Actually, internally BASIC09 floats are five-byte quantities, like Microshaft
BASIC for the CoCo. (One byte exponent, four-byte mantissa, the moral near-
equivalent of ~9-10 significant decimal digits.)

However, I heartily agree with you: the Microware C floating-point stuff is
REAL SLOW. This is the only point at which a 2MHz 6809 won't keep ahead of
an IBM PC and only slightly behind slower compilers for 10 MHz 8086 systems.
It's a shame--they really ought to borrow floating-point routines from
BASIC09 (both arithmetic and math library: the BASIC09 docs say that they
use CORDIC methods, by the way, for those who have been following the stuff
in net.lang.c about sin & cos).

BTW, a fellow (name lamentably forgotten, or I'd give credit where due)
posted a math library he wrote to the OS-9 SIG on CompuServe; it should
be available for the downloading.

						James Jones