Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!decvax!ucbvax!agate!ig!uwmcsd1!bbn!husc6!linus!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: More than 32 bits needed where?
Message-ID: <2711@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: 9 Feb 88 14:40:39 GMT
References: <235@unicom.UUCP> <28200089@ccvaxa> <3104@watcgl.waterloo.edu> <19667@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <625@cresswell.quintus.UUCP> <4947@pyr.gatech.EDU>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT.
Lines: 17

In article <4947@pyr.gatech.EDU> kludge@pyr.UUCP (Scott Dorsey) writes:
>   I routinely code on the CDC 170 machines (60 bit word, 6 bit character)
>and the CDC 180 machines (64 bit word, real ASCII). ...
>   Overall, though, it's not worth it.  These machines are excellent number
>crunchers (having a 64-bit real is a spectacular thing... Double Precision
>is 128 bits!), but most of the power is wasted.

So what!  Your car runs only, maybe, 5% of the time; the rest of the time
it's sitting idle, its capacity wasted.  Does this bother you?

Computer power is cheap and getting cheaper.  Today, if you occasionally use
the full power of your machine, the power is worth having.  In the future,
that will be true if you *ever* use the full power.
-- 

Frank Adams                           ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Ashton-Tate          52 Oakland Ave North         E. Hartford, CT 06108