Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!hanami!landman
From: landman%hanami@Sun.COM (Howard A. Landman)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Quadruple-Precision Floating Point
Message-ID: <82778@sun.uucp>
Date: 22 Dec 88 01:44:59 GMT
References: <8561@alice.UUCP> <400001@uxg.cso.uiuc.edu>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: landman@sun.UUCP (Howard A. Landman)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 11

In article <400001@uxg.cso.uiuc.edu> phil@uxg.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
>I wish some machine had truly VARIABLE precision firmware floating AND FIXED
>point (i.e with fractions) arithmetic.  On a RISC machine, an architecture
>that allowed easy extension of precision would be just as good.

I believe that at least some of the Connection Machine languages allow
fairly arbitrary precision.  Certainly, the hardware is capable of it
within the limits of processor memory (up to ~64K bits).

	Howard A. Landman
	landman@hanami.sun.com