Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!yale!cmcl2!lanl!lambda!jlg
From: jlg@lambda.UUCP (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: complex*32?
Message-ID: <14238@lambda.UUCP>
Date: 13 Feb 90 19:11:57 GMT
References: <KHB.90Feb12174730@chiba.Eng.Sun.COM>
Lines: 11

From article <KHB.90Feb12174730@chiba.Eng.Sun.COM>, by khb@chiba.Eng.Sun.COM (Keith Bierman - SPD Advanced Languages):
> [... complex*32 vs. complex*16 ...]
> IEEE double is large enough that quad precision (*32) isn't needed. [...]

That's rather a broad claim.  Seems to me that the only people qualified
to determine whether quad precision is needed are the folks who might
need it - the users.  On the Cray _single_ precision floats are 64-bits
(8-bytes) long.  So, complex*16 is the _single_ precision complex type
on Cray hardware.  Some extended precision beyond that is often needed.

J. Giles