Path: utzoo!dciem!array!colin
From: colin@array.UUCP (Colin Plumb)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Killer Micro II
Message-ID: <632@array.UUCP>
Date: 28 Aug 90 19:50:35 GMT
References: <527@llnl.LLNL.GOV> <603@array.UUCP> <2482@l.cc.purdue.edu>
Organization: Array Systems Computing, Inc., Toronto, Ontario, CANADA
Lines: 16

In article <2482@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
> There are plenty of mathematical calculations which need lots of computing,
> but use little data.  I doubt if these vaunted machines will be much good
> at a three-dimensional numerical integral, for example.  And how good is
> their integer arithmetic?  If accurate calculation is needed, and this is
> not all that unusual, floating point is essentially useless.

They also do integer ops at the same 100 MHz rate.  Why would they be no
good at a 3-d numerical integrals?  They work at Cray speeds and have
shorter pipelines.  50 MFLOPS *scalar*.  It impresses the hell out of me.

Besides which, it never hurts to use FP - I can always ignore the FP exponent
field and find myself dealing with 52-bit integers.  FP inexactness only
happens if you do things that wouldn't work exactly with integers, either.
-- 
	-Colin