Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!zodiac!joyce!sri-unix!garth!smryan
From: smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Standard Un*x H/W architecture (was: MAC 88000)
Message-ID: <980@garth.UUCP>
Date: 15 Jul 88 21:48:00 GMT
References: <261@hodge.UUCP> <370STORKEL@RICE> <607@riddle.UUCP> <11783@ames.arc.nasa.gov>
Reply-To: smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan)
Organization: INTERGRAPH (APD) -- Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 18

>                      Personally, I would be satisfied if all vendors
>agreed on a standard data representation - specifically, IEEE floating
>point 32 bit and 64 bit, ASCII, and two's comp. integers, so that DATA
>files could be moved between machines, a requirement in our environment.

Not wishing to take sides, but some people like ones complement, and some
people like different floating point formats. By the way, where is the IEEE
standard for 128 bit floating point for Cray, ETA, and 180s? Will we one day
have 256 bit cpus? What happens if optical computers make it big and it
becomes cheaper to use radix 6 (red/.../purple) integers?

Be careful about standarising things--they lock you into the problems of
the past and out of the solutions of the future.

another fine specification from
   s m ryan

Be wary of general statements--the nitpickers will eat you up.