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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!ihnss!knudsen
From: knudsen@ihnss.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.6809
Subject: BASIC09 floating point faster than C's!?!
Message-ID: <2314@ihnss.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 26-Nov-84 18:30:20 EST
Article-I.D.: ihnss.2314
Posted: Mon Nov 26 18:30:20 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 27-Nov-84 04:38:39 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 19

<is this bit necessary?>

This is so crazy that I'm almost afraid to post it.  It appears that the
same program runs faster in Basic09 than in Microware C (both on a Coco).
In fact, the C version runs about even with ROM Basic, Extended.
The program is a simple simulation of a planet in orbit around a sun,
which I first wrote over a year ago in Basic.  It uses some floating point
mults and divides, and ONE call to square root.  Since Microware C has no
math library, I wrote a Newton's-method square root routine which is pretty
standard, I'd say.
	Results: Even if the program just prints out the X,Y coordinates of
the planet as it goes around its orbit, the Basic09 version runs anywhere from
5 to 10 times faster than either C or RadioShack Basic.  I can understand
Basic being slow, and it uses 40-bit floats.
	However, C and Basic09 both use 32-bit floats (I declared everything
float, not double in C), and I'd expect C to be at least as fast as Basic09.
What UNIVAC I (c. 1950) did Microware steal their floating point operators
from for C?  SHould they take the guys across the hall in the Basic09 dept.
out for a few beers and borrow their floating +-*/ ?  mike k