Xref: utzoo comp.lang.misc:3519 comp.arch:11518
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From: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.arch
Subject: Re: Numbers (was Re: Fast conversions)
Keywords: fixed point integer
Message-ID: <4011@phri.UUCP>
Date: 25 Sep 89 23:28:26 GMT
References: <832@dms.UUCP> <688@UALTAVM.BITNET> <9dAz02zs58y201@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> <27935@winchester.mips.COM> <136@bbxsda.UUCP> <1989Sep22.201906.10618@utzoo.uucp> <6244@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <34993@apple.Apple.COM>
Reply-To: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Organization: Public Health Research Inst. (NY, NY)
Lines: 15

Donald Lindsay writes:
> The military world has always been fond of putting decimal points in
> the middle of binary integers, and calling it "fixed point". 

	Not just the military world.  On the the biggest consumers of CPU
cycles around here is a program which calculates rna secondary structures
by an energy minimization process.  All in integer math, using as the base
unit 0.1Kcal.  Virtually the only floating point in the program is a
floating divide by 10.0 at the end to print the result in a form more
familiar to human readers.
-- 
Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
{att,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy -or- roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu
"The connector is the network"