Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!dartvax!eleazar.dartmouth.edu!earleh
From: earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Endless inSANEity...
Message-ID: <14017@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Date: 21 Jun 89 02:17:24 GMT
References: <227700009@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu> <2089@husc6.harvard.edu> <14001@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <2092@husc6.harvard.edu>
Sender: news@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU
Reply-To: earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton)
Organization: Thayer School of Engineering
Lines: 19

In article <2092@husc6.harvard.edu> siegel@endor.UUCP (Rich Siegel) writes:
>In article <14001@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu
	(Earle R. Horton) writes:
...
>>     Actually, since the first Mac had 128k of RAM, I would say that
>>Apple had a fairly reasonable reason for storing extended in 80 bits.
>>Kind of like storing flags in the high bits of master pointers.
>
>	What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?
>I don't follow the correlation.

     Well, by storing extended in 80 bits versus 96 bits, you save 16
bits per floating point quantity.  By storing flags in the high bits of
master pointers, you save at least 16 bits over doing it the right
way.  I suppose it is a weak correlation, at that.

Earle R. Horton
"People forget how fast you did a job, but they remember how well you
did it."  Salada Tag Lines