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From: crandell@ut-sally.UUCP (Jim Crandell)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro
Subject: Re: MC68881 Floating-point performance times
Message-ID: <449@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 11-Dec-84 11:11:43 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.449
Posted: Tue Dec 11 11:11:43 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Dec-84 02:21:34 EST
References: <263@oakhill.UUCP> <896@utastro.UUCP>
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 27
Xref: watmath net.micro.68k:483 net.micro:8886

>   There has been much discussion on the net
> about whether the C language is flawed because is specifies that all
> floating operations be done in double precision, despite the "obvious
> gain in speed" that would result in using single precision operations
> where they offer enough precision.
> 
> Looks like it just depends on whose chip you use.

Yeah, NOW.  C has been around several years now, and it seems to me
that FORTRANers have been using that excuse not to look at C (not that
they don't have others at least as good) for most of them.  I'm a C
hacker myself, and I do very little number-crunching these days, but I
still believe that the criticism was completely valid when it first
appeared.  Besides, it's rather easy to show that DMR (I assume) wasn't
thinking of the 68881 when he decided to restrict evaluation to
double [:-)].  He MAY, of course, have assumed -- as nearly all of us
have finally come to realize -- that doing things in hardware gets
easier as time goes by, but extending that general observation to a
prediction of a monolithic FPU with an 80-bit path would surely have
required a pretty phenomenal crystal ball.

As for what netters are saying nowadays: well, some of them just need
some new material, I agree.
-- 

    Jim Crandell, C. S. Dept., The University of Texas at Austin
               {ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!crandell