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From: conte@crest.crhc.uiuc.edu (Tom Conte)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.handhelds
Subject: Re: How accurate is the 48??
Message-ID: <1991May20.172829.23432@roundup.crhc.uiuc.edu>
Date: 20 May 91 17:28:29 GMT
References: <7174@acorn.co.uk>
Sender: news@roundup.crhc.uiuc.edu
Reply-To: conte@crest.crhc.uiuc.edu (Tom Conte)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing, University of Illinois
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In article <7174@acorn.co.uk>, asmith@acorn.co.uk (Andy Smith) writes:
> [Stuff about FP limitations]
> the 48 still suffer from this limitation?
> 
> What say you??
> 
> Andy

No amount of floating-point wizardry will remove such problems completely.

The designers of the 28S consulted with Kahan, who won the Turing award
in-part for his efforts designing the floating-point format that was used
(IEEE/ANSI stadard 754).  (The format was designed for a broad class of
machines and not solely for the 28S!)

So, yes it's bad.  But, no, it can't get much better either.

------
Tom Conte	  Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing
 conte@uiuc.edu	  University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois
  Fast cars, fast women, fast computers