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From: afgg6490@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Cyrix - Fast Divide, etc.
Message-ID: <112400014@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 14 Dec 89 10:38:42 GMT
References: <112400012@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu>
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Nf-ID: #R:uxa.cso.uiuc.edu:112400012:uxa.cso.uiuc.edu:112400014:000:1313
Nf-From: uxa.cso.uiuc.edu!afgg6490    Dec 13 16:08:00 1989


>I am very excited that you are putting together a survey. Being new to
>the arithmatic side of things, I have always wanted to read a detailed
>document on the evolution of floating point ALU architectures, starting
>with what Seymour Cray did when he was at Control Data. This field is
>facinating to me because it combines high speed circuit design with
>innovative algorithms. The same could be said about high performance
>graphics accellerators.
>
>Michael Hui   hui@mprgate.mpr.ca   604-985-4214  Vancouver B.C. Canada

Sorry, I didn't do too much history.  All I did was read the past, say,
5 years' worth of papers and try to get a coherent picture in my mind
of the state of the art and practice of computer arithmetic.  I'd like
to read a historical survey too.

THe best I've seen are still Hwang, and Waser and Flynn - although I would
still describe these as "introductory" texts in computer arithmetic,
not as detailed as I would like.  Hwang, especially, provides a bit
of history.

(You know what I would like? I'd like to have a "Art of Computer Architecture"
series much like Knuth's "Art of Computer Programming", with sections on
arithmetic, instruction sets, memory and busses, I/O, compilers, and so 
on...  If it doesn't exist, I'd like to write it, but I don't have time or
$$ to do so.)