Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!sun-barr!newstop!east!tjp!jpainter
From: jpainter@tjp.East.Sun.COM (John Painter - Sun BOS Hardware)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: hardware complex arithmetic support
Message-ID: <725@east.East.Sun.COM>
Date: 18 Aug 89 17:06:15 GMT
References:  <1672@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <4781@freja.diku.dk>
Sender: news@east.East.Sun.COM
Reply-To: jpainter@tjp.East.Sun.COM (John Painter - Sun BOS Hardware)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Billerica MA
Lines: 45

In article <4781@freja.diku.dk> njk@freja.diku.dk (Niels J|rgen Kruse) writes:
>davidsen@sungod.crd.ge.com (ody) writes:
>
>>  Why hasn't anyone built a complex FPU? This seems like a reasonable
>>thing to do, in term of being common. It could probably be built into
>>one of the existing micro FPUs without too much trouble (obviously needs
>>more microcode), but I doubt that you win much because the chip doesn't
>>have the power to do a lot in parallel.
>
>As far as i can tell, the main advantage of hardware support
>for complex arithmetic is the greater encoding density allowed
>by a dedicated storage format for complex numbers.
>
>Consider that it is meaningless from a numerical viewpoint to
>represent one component of a complex number with greater
>accuracy than the other.
>

Meaningless in what applications?  I might want to know phase relation-
ships with more precision offered when the phase of the voltage and
current components are nearly 90 degrees out of phase.  

/Tjp
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