Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!udel!nigel.ee.udel.edu!mccalpin From: mccalpin@perelandra.cms.udel.edu (John D. McCalpin) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Killer Micro II Message-ID: Date: 28 Aug 90 16:19:12 GMT References: <527@llnl.LLNL.GOV> <603@array.UUCP> <2482@l.cc.purdue.edu> Sender: usenet@ee.udel.edu Organization: College of Marine Studies, U. Del. Lines: 28 Nntp-Posting-Host: perelandra.cms.udel.edu In-reply-to: cik@l.cc.purdue.edu's message of 28 Aug 90 00:53:00 GMT >>>>> On 28 Aug 90 00:53:00 GMT, cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) said: > 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. > -- > Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907 Yes, it is a terrible shame that 64-bit floating-point arithmetic is hopelessly inaccurate and "essentially useless". It is very sad that engineers saddled with this archaic technology have been utterly unable to design an airplane that flies, or a bridge that doesn't collapse, or a spacecraft that could explore the solar system.... ......... More seriously, I keep on hearing rumours from IBM that they want to know if us users want 128-bit floating-point support on the RISC system/6000 machines. Apparently the combined adder/multiplier makes 128-bit add/subtract/multiply operations only about 4 times as costly as 64-bit operations. I would definitely like to play with it, but I do not consider it a high-priority item.... -- John D. McCalpin mccalpin@perelandra.cms.udel.edu Assistant Professor mccalpin@vax1.udel.edu College of Marine Studies, U. Del. J.MCCALPIN/OMNET