Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: IEEE floating point
Message-ID: <3421@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 28 May 91 16:55:04 GMT
References: <9105250030.AA08036@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <5397@network.ucsd.edu>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen)
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center, Schenectady NY
Lines: 21

In article <5397@network.ucsd.edu> mbk@jacobi.ucsd.edu (Matt Kennel) writes:

| Con:  Floating-point is only an approximation to reality anyway, so the
| business of "correctness" is silly.  THe answer will never be truly Right,
| so who gives a flying rat's ass about eeking out that last bit of 'precision'.
| The IEEE standard only serves to make programs "wrong" in the same artificial
| way (instilling a false sense of security about the results), but ends up
| making computers alot slower and more expensive, only to please some anal ret-
| entive nerds in some ivory-tower committee.   (:-))

  Take a course in numerical analysis. A small reduction in accuracy can
result in a drop from a few significant digits to none, depending on
what you're doing, and how you're doing it. What good is an answer if
you lose that "last bit of precision?" In analysis of some problems you
may not have more than a few significant bits for starters, and I would
rather not trust my bits to a computer designed with the marketing
department winning compromises between "right" and "fast" answers.
-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
        "Most of the VAX instructions are in microcode,
         but halt and no-op are in hardware for efficiency"