Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1+some 2/3/84; site dual.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ucbvax!dual!mats From: mats@dual.UUCP (Mats Wichmann) Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Subject: Re: floats and doubles on a VAX 750 with an FPA Message-ID: <740@dual.UUCP> Date: Mon, 6-Aug-84 16:05:33 EDT Article-I.D.: dual.740 Posted: Mon Aug 6 16:05:33 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 7-Aug-84 05:24:19 EDT References: <714@sri-arpa.UUCP> Organization: Dual Systems, Berkeley, CA Lines: 12 All FP calcualtions in double? This hurts us even more on micros without FP hardware, and even WITH FP hardware. Yuck!!! We had to convert our compiler to IEEE floating point, because that is what the hardware supported. The penalty for float->double conversion is even bigger than for the DEC format floating point. The ANSI standard allows for, but unfortunately does *NOT* require, that floats can be handled as floats instead of converting to double. As someone pointed out a while back this whole thing is historical, dating back to a problem with the PDP-11 floating point instructions, and has been allowed to continue ever since.