Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wuarchive!m.cs.uiuc.edu!cs.uiuc.EDU!johnson From: johnson@cs.uiuc.EDU (Ralph Johnson) Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk Subject: Re: Integer / Float arithmetic in ST80 Keywords: number classes, speed of floats, primitives Message-ID: <1991May21.222216.5429@m.cs.uiuc.edu> Date: 21 May 91 22:22:16 GMT References: <2322@media03.UUCP> Sender: news@m.cs.uiuc.edu (News Database (admin-Mike Schwager)) Reply-To: johnson@cs.uiuc.EDU (Ralph Johnson) Organization: University of Illinois Lines: 17 Nntp-Posting-Host: m.cs.uiuc.edu Peter Kriens explained why Floats are a lot slower in Smalltalk than Integers. Although he was technically correct, he was sociologically wrong. The reasons that Floats are slow in Smalltalk are because they aren't use much; they aren't used much because they are slow. The venders optimize their systems for the common cases, and the common cases are Integers. It is possible to do the same tricks with Floats as are done with Integers. With enough effort, I bet we could make Floats as fast as Integers. I wish that would happen, because Smalltalk would make a very good environment for scientific computing if it were only faster at floating point arithmetic. Given an appropriate financial incentive, I would be willing to prove my point. Ralph Johnson -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign