Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mcdchg!chinet!patrickd
From: patrickd@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick Deupree)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Window Graphics
Keywords: Will Math Coprocessor help?
Message-ID: <1990Jul13.171420.26275@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 13 Jul 90 17:14:20 GMT
References: <4937@milton.u.washington.edu> <6860@umd5.umd.edu> <1990Jul12.202607.22144@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>
Distribution: na
Organization: The Whitewater Group, Evanston, IL
Lines: 31

In article <1990Jul12.202607.22144@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> ezk@cunixe.cc.columbia.edu (Erez "HWank1" Zadok) writes:
> In article <4937@milton.u.washington.edu> yjkim@milton.u.washington.edu (Yong Kim) writes:

>>I am wondering whether the graphical display will fly with the help of
>>Math coprocessor.  Screen updates and drawing graphical image will

The only way the Math Coprocessor would help is if you waited until the last
minute to do all floating point to integer conversions (that is, if there are
any floating point numbers in your calculations).  Times when there might
be a lot of floating point numbers when manipulating graphics is when a
different coordinate system is used (e.g. HIMETRIC, LOMETRIC, HIENGLISH,
LOENGLISH).  Be forwarned, though, that you might find computers that
don't have co-processor's to be considerably slow when running a program
compiled to use the co-processor.

>Can a math co-processor do integer arithmetic?  If so (or even if it can
>only do floating-point arithmetic), can that be used somehow in next
>releases of win3 to speed up some operations?

As mentioned above, non-co-processor machines must go through co-processor
emulation in order to perform floating point mathmatics.  This can slow
down the speed of a program, considerably should there be a lot of floating
point math.  This being the case, Microsoft would have to supply two versions
of all DLL's and of the win program itself, one for those that have the
co-processor, one for those that don't.  Needless to say, this could get
confusing.
-- 
"Organized fandom is composed of a bunch of nitpickers with a thing for
 trivial pursuit."  -Harlan Ellison

Patrick Deupree ->	patrickd@chinet.chi.il.us