Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!gatech!mcnc!ecsvax!urjlew
From: urjlew@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Rostyk Lewyckyj)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Quadruple-Precision Floating Point ?
Summary: ;-)
Keywords: REAL*16 hardware
Message-ID: <6132@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>
Date: 25 Dec 88 20:22:02 GMT
References: <8561@alice.UUCP> <3688@s.cc.purdue.edu> <285@loligo.fsu.edu> <6053@louie.udel.EDU>
Organization: UNC Educational Computing Service
Lines: 13



Since none of the supercomputers i.e. Cray, ETA, CONVEX,
(By definition of most who claim to be supercomputer experts,
IBM does not qualify ) provide quadruple precision hardware
support. (Cray double precision is 96 bits. IBM Q precision
with some hardware support is 112 bits.), there is by common
concensus no need for reasonable speed Q precision calculations.
So you should either find another way of doing it, after all
extended accuracy is less important than speed, as evidenced
by the great emphasis placed on Cray speed and none placed on
the other companies arithmetic libraries, OR you may need
to do your work on that off brand IBM equipment.