Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!vsi1!wyse!mips!mark
From: mark@mips.COM (Mark G. Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: John von Neumann, sqrt instr
Message-ID: <25643@obiwan.mips.COM>
Date: 17 Aug 89 17:46:02 GMT
References: <21353@cup.portal.com>
Reply-To: mark@mips.COM (Mark G. Johnson)
Distribution: usa
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 13

In article <21353@cup.portal.com> mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson) writes:
    >I remember reading in an old AFIPS paper that von Neumann believed
    >computers of the future would all have the SQRT instruction, because of
    >the importance of square root in coordinate geometry.
 
Several of the RISC camps, armed with gigabytes of traces and simulation
results, have decided to include FP square root as well.  I suspect it is
because of the importance of square root in computing the width of the
depletion layer at a semiconductor junction.
-- 
 -- Mark Johnson	
 	MIPS Computer Systems, 930 E. Arques, Sunnyvale, CA 94086
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