From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.1 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_40,INVALID_DATE, MSGID_SHORT autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!bcm!svedberg!rick From: rick@svedberg.bcm.tmc.edu (Richard H. Miller) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: More on Ada and decimal Summary: Decimal operations Message-ID: <1163@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> Date: 13 Jul 88 23:22:54 GMT References: <8806301350.AA05872@bx.sei.cmu.edu> <1143@cod.NOSC.MIL> Sender: usenet@bcm.tmc.edu List-Id: In article <1143@cod.NOSC.MIL>, broman@cod.NOSC.MIL (Vincent P. Broman) writes: > > I find it hard to conceive of a commercial application (aside from > public-key encryption) which would require more than the 64 bit > integers supported by VAXes and PCs with i8087s. Many systems such > as Unix support infinite precision arithmetic in software. > In any case, point 2 below casts doubt on the relevance of point 1. But many of the systems are not 64 bit machines...remember that there are large number of IBM systems and other systems in which 32 bits are the common size of integers. Also, most commerical shops will not be using UNIX anytime soon to do large scale business processing. Also, many of these machines take a much longer time to execute double word integer arithmatic. > The "lots of I/O" in commercial applications is mostly unformatted > I/O accessing databases, not formatted printing of account balances. But much of the work is involved in the calculations of decimal values. There is enough of a difference that many of the mainframe architecture provide explicit architectual support for decimal operations. The cost savings in this is NOT trivial. Any system which supports business processing needs to support decimal mode processing Richard H. Miller Email: rick@svedberg.bcm.tmc.edu Head, System Support Voice: (713)799-4511 Baylor College of Medicine US Mail: One Baylor Plaza, 302H Houston, Texas 77030