Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!polyslo!rcfische
From: rcfische@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Raymond C. Fischer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Mac of the 90's: FLOPS, MegaFLOPS?
Message-ID: <25b4fa10.5538@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU>
Date: 17 Jan 90 23:04:48 GMT
References: <5338.25af60d1@jane.uh.edu>
Reply-To: rcfische@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Raymond C. Fischer)
Distribution: na
Organization: Cal Poly State University -- San Luis Obispo
Lines: 15


In article <5338.25af60d1@jane.uh.edu> math1h3@jane.uh.edu writes:
>  What would I like to see in the Mac of the 90's?  A better floating point
>environment, that's what.  Here are some obvious improvements I'd like to see:
>
>2.  SANE should recognize when a coprocessor is present and pass through all
>transcendental function calls.  Really, how much more accurate is SANE?  It
>certainly isn't worth the slowdown it produces, not to me it isn't.

Using the 68882 instead of SANE loses 12 bits of precision.  The 68882 only
computes trancendentals to the accuracy of double precision rather than
extended precision. (square root excepted)

Ray Fischer
rcfische@polyslo.calpoly.edu