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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,88ed72d98e6b3457 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-10-09 01:22:12 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed.news.qwest.net!namche.sun.com!news1brm.central.sun.com!new-usenet.uk.sun.com!not-for-mail From: Ole-Hjalmar Kristensen Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Standard Library Interest? Date: 09 Oct 2003 10:10:22 +0200 Organization: Sun Microsystems Message-ID: References: <3F81700B.1050701@noplace.com> <3F82014E.2040002@noplace.com> <3F8485B3.8010109@comcast.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: khepri06.norway.sun.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: new-usenet.uk.sun.com 1065687023 19128 129.159.112.195 (9 Oct 2003 08:10:23 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@new-usenet.uk.sun.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 9 Oct 2003 08:10:23 GMT User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) Emacs/21.2 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:521 Date: 2003-10-09T08:10:23+00:00 List-Id: OK, I'll bite. What's wrong with Cody-Waite? (W.J. Cody and W. Waite, Software manual for the elementary functions, Prentice Hall, 1980). >>>>> "RIE" == Robert I Eachus writes: RIE> Marin David Condic wrote: >> It always has been and always will be a "Political Problem". We've >> known for aeons how to make a square root routine. Getting one that >> could be accepted as "Standard" was a political problem. Just >> because its "political" doesn't make it any less a "problem", so we >> need to find the "political" will to do it. From there, the >> technology is relatively simple. RIE> I don't want to harp on this, but WHO has known how to make a square RIE> root routine for aeons? In the early sixties it was vital to NASA to RIE> do square roots fast and accurately for the Apollo project. I worked RIE> on this, and the eventual result was to modify four IBM 7094s to RIE> include a 36-bit to 36-bit integer square-root function. I won't go RIE> into a long discussion of WHY a 36-bit to 36-bit square-root with the RIE> implicit binary point to the right of the most significant digit was RIE> what was needed. Just the thought of explaining to ONE more person RIE> why that was what was needed, and that it was a very simple RIE> modification of the IBM 7094 to add it makes me want to scream. RIE> So yes, I know how to use the Newton-Rhapson method to find square RIE> roots, and I also know how to implement a square-root in microcode so RIE> that it is faster than the hardware divide. But the idea that this RIE> was well or widely known in 1983 is totally false. There were CPUs in RIE> the nineties that still did it wrong. (Of course, in the nineties -- Sun Microsystems cannot have these opinions even if they wanted to.