Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!ucsd!hub!revans From: revans@voodoo.ucsb.edu Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran Subject: Re: complex*32? Message-ID: <3980@hub.UUCP> Date: 17 Feb 90 02:32:20 GMT Sender: news@hub.UUCP Organization: UC, Santa Barbara. Physics Computer Services Lines: 25 -Message-Text-Follows- In article <20285@bcsaic.UUCP>, carroll@bcsaic.UUCP (Jeff Carroll) writes... >In article khb@chiba.Eng.Sun.COM (Keith Bierman - SPD Advanced Languages) writes: >> >>IEEE double is large enough that quad precision (*32) isn't needed. I >>neglected to be specific in my previous posting. _roughly_ speaking >>ieee dp is good from 10**-308 to 10**+308. >> > .. material omitted .. > > The WHOLE POINT is that some of us think that we *may need* >COMPLEX*32. And some of us out here *know* we need COMPLEX*32. There are a number of applications in my own field (seismology) where we thrash our machines night and day to calculate pairs of quantities, take differences, and then sum the residuals. In principle, the differences can become vanishingly small. (And before anybody says it, there's a huge body of literature out there in how to avoid/ameliorate/fine-tune these differencing processes, but for some applications, we are just plain stuck with them). COMPLEX*64 gives us sensible headroom in which to work ... Russ Signature - what me bother?