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From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: F.P. vs. arbitrary-precision
Message-ID: <20444@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Date: 26 Sep 90 13:51:07 GMT
References: <3755@osc.COM> <4513@taux01.nsc.com> <119244@linus.mitre.org> <3977@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <2538@l.cc.purdue.edu> <1990Sep11.035826.22880@cs.cmu.edu>
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In article <1990Sep11.035826.22880@cs.cmu.edu> spot@TR4.GP.CS.CMU.EDU (Scott Draves) writes:
...
>
>Anyway, exactly how much slower is it to hand-code arbitrary precision
>arithmetic? 10 times?  100 times?  Do I really care? Do the chip makers
>care? What fraction of people use fp compared with arb. prec. arith?
>How often would your bit stream instruction(s) be used?  What are the
>chances that it would fit into a RISC pipeline?
>
>You're right when you complain that chips these days aren't good for
>what you do.  But I don't care, and neither do many other people.
>Flame off.

The architectural
requirements for arthmetic are interesting. Estimates of the current
market are far less so.