Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!microsoft!gideony
From: gideony@microsoft.UUCP (Gideon Yuvall)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: IEEE p854
Message-ID: <6267@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 11 Jul 89 19:46:21 GMT
References: <12194@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU> <2194@ucsfcca.ucsf.edu>
Reply-To: gideony@microsoft.UUCP (Gideon Yuvall)
Distribution: na
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 14

In article <2194@ucsfcca.ucsf.edu> dick@ucsfccb.UUCP (Dick Karpinski) writes:
>a floating-point number.  Other radices were considered but there
>was no support for base 8 or 16 since they are inferior to base 2
>and lose the hidden bit trick.  Base 10 is inferior to base 2 but
>has the distinct advantage that human readable representations do
>not suffer any conversion roundoff on the way in and out.

W. Kahan says base-16 fell off the standard when it became clear IBM
wasn't interested: nobody in his right mind would put hex 
floating-point on a new
architecture, and the old 360/370/... architecture was not going
to be changed.
-- 
Gideon Yuval, gideony@microsof.UUCP, 206-882-8080 (fax:206-883-8101;TWX:160520)