Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!leah!bingvaxu!vu0310 From: vu0310@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (R. Kym Horsell) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Killer Micro II Keywords: floating point Message-ID: <3945@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> Date: 6 Sep 90 20:43:16 GMT References: <527@llnl.LLNL.GOV> <603@array.UUCP> <2482@l.cc.purdue.edu> <2497@l.cc.purdue.edu> <3755@osc.COM> Reply-To: vu0310@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu.cc.binghamton.edu (R. Kym Horsell) Organization: SUNY Binghamton, NY Lines: 26 In article <3755@osc.COM> jgk@osc.COM (Joe Keane) writes: \\\ >Our current programming languages have a strong influence. C has `float' and >`double' types, and most machines have single-precision and double-precision >floating point numbers. Coincidence? I think not. Eh? This is putting the cart before the horse somewhat... Fortran predates C by a good interval and they only put DP into *Fortran* because the h/w supported it (and they didn't want assembly-level guys being able to get hold of it & not Fortran guys). >Another interesting area is hardware support for arbitrary-precision real >numbers. Of course that brings up the dreaded word `closure', at which point >most C programmers throw up their hands. Some day i'll write a nifty tech >report about it. Then maybe i can bribe a hardware guy to add a couple >instructions to some math co-processor. Yeah right. Eh? ``Closure'' may be used in a technical sense here (and, if so, has a meaning I never came across) but _usually_ is a term for ``pure code + environment'' (c.f. Lisp & friends). What this has to specifically do with FP and APA I _don't know_. (I endorse any handling of closures by hardware, however -- it's cheap in terms of Si & well worth it in terms of performance improvements in certain areas). -Kym Horsell