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From: braner@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (braner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: More ST Floating Point Performance
Message-ID: <1361@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: Fri, 12-Jun-87 20:14:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: batcompu.1361
Posted: Fri Jun 12 20:14:19 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 20-Jun-87 18:54:28 EDT
References: <8706120032.AA13145@cory.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: braner@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (braner)
Organization: Cornell Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Lines: 19
Summary: some corrections

[]

As far as I know, the Amiga does not "support" the 68881 in any way
beyond providing an expansion slot.  The 68881 is really only fully
supported by the 68020 CPU chip.  The "Turbo Amiga" is basically a
seperate computer that uses the Amiga as sort of a terminal.  It has
its own CPU, memory. And it costs a lot more than the Amiga itself.
The Mac II is comparable in price and comes standard with the 68020/
68881.  These two machines may seem expensive to us Atari users, but
they are _incredibly_ powerful for number crunching.  Better than the
VAX and for a small fraction of the price...  Where are you, Atari?
(Working on a new 8/16 bit machine, I believe.)

The Motorola FFP library (and all other 32-bit FP libs) do _NOT_ have
10-digit precision, only about 6--7 digits.  That is frequently useful
but just as frequently terrible.  Think about it:  10^10 ~ 2^33, so
no bits left for the exponent...

- Moshe Braner