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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,dad65365cb2b3396 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: fac41,dad65365cb2b3396 X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,dad65365cb2b3396 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,dad65365cb2b3396 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public From: vsnyder@math.jpl.nasa.gov (Van Snyder) Subject: Re: The disturbing myth of Eiffel portability Date: 1996/11/26 Message-ID: <57djgu$rl2@netline-fddi.jpl.nasa.gov>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 200907365 references: <3294e64b.74799475@news2.ibm.net> <56t1m4$nis@bcrkh13.bnr.ca> <1996Nov20.065345.1@eisner> content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++ Date: 1996-11-26T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article , dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: |> Well the IEEE standard is nearly 20 years old now, so there are very few |> such machines left, and they become of decreasing interest. The only |> really notable exception is the Japanese super computers, which made the |> horrible error of copying junk IBM hex floating-point. There's an interesting story behind that. When IBM was designing the 360, they hired Welwel Kahan as a consultant on floating point arithmetic. His recommendation was that the worst possible thing they could do would be to use HEX radix floating point. So they went and did it anyway. BTW, there is another notable exception. Alphas can sort-of emulate VAX floating point, which isn't IEEE. But when they do, they convert VAX FP formats to IEEE, do the arithmetic, then convert them back. In the process, they lose one bit. So it's the worst of both worlds. -- What fraction of Americans believe | Van Snyder Wrestling is real and NASA is fake? | vsnyder@math.jpl.nasa.gov