Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!crdgw1!sungod!davidsen From: davidsen@sungod.crd.ge.com (ody) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: hardware complex arithmetic support Message-ID: <1758@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> Date: 18 Aug 89 19:48:38 GMT References: <1672@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <4781@freja.diku.dk> Sender: news@crdgw1.crd.ge.com Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) Organization: General Electric Corp. R&D, Schenectady, NY Lines: 21 In article <4781@freja.diku.dk> njk@freja.diku.dk (Niels J|rgen Kruse) writes: | Consider that it is meaningless from a numerical viewpoint to | represent one component of a complex number with greater | accuracy than the other. | | This means that a dedicated storage format need only have *one* | exponent. Comparing such a double precision format to a conventional Whoa! I'm missing something here, what has exponent got to do with accuracy? The exponent specifies the magnitude and the mantissa provides the accuracy. If you have one exponent and the real component is large while the imaginary component is small you will have fewer significant digits (that's what I mean by accuracy) in one than the other. Could you 'splain this to me? It sounds as if you are saying that if one component is large in magnitude we can afford to have less precision on the other. Hope I misunderstand what you're telling me. bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM) {uunet | philabs}!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me