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From: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Computers for users not programmers
Message-ID: <3159:Feb1213:56:3091@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 12 Feb 91 13:56:30 GMT
Organization: IR
Lines: 15

It's easy for hardware to give you the top 32 bits of a 32 by 32 integer
multiply, and the operation is very useful in many integer computations.

Fortran and C don't support this operation, so they're a lot less useful
for some computations than they could be. It would be good if high-level
languages provided the high word of a multiply.

Some people think that if Fortran and C don't support an operation, it's
a waste to put the operation into new chips. They're wrong. Just because
language designers make mistakes doesn't mean those mistakes should last
forever.

I think this is Herman's point.

---Dan