Maciej wrote on Wed Feb 20 14:28:33 PST 2008: > Besides compatibility issues, this would be a significant performance > regression for math-heavy code. I would consider this a showstopper to > implementing such a change.
I'm inclined to agree that it is (unfortunately) probably not a good idea to simply replace the default binary arithmetic with decimal128 -- even though this would give better precision for math applications, as well as all the other benefits of decimal arithmetic. But I don't buy the performance argument -- decimal math packages are respectably fast nowadays. See, for example, the measurements at http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/decimal/dnperf.html -- a decDouble add is a couple of hundred cycles in software. That's roughly the same speed on current processors as the hardware binary floating-point available when ECMAScript was first written. In today's (unpipelined) decimal FP hardware it is much faster than those software measurements, of course, and there's no reason why future implementations should not be within 10%-15% of binary FP. > I also agree with Mark's comment that arbitrary-precision integers and > arbitrary-precision rationals seem like more generally useful types > than decimal floating point, if any numeric types are to be added, but > that seems like an issue more for ES4 than 3.1. I really do not understand that comment. Almost every numerate human being on the planet uses decimal arithmetic every day; very few need or use arbitrary-precision integers or rationals of more than a few (decimal) digits. And almost every commercial website and server deals with currency, prices, and measurements. It's true that many websites use encryption -- research for which uses BigNums extensively -- but websites don't need or use a general-purpose integer package for that. Mike - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mike Cowlishaw, IBM Fellow IBM UK (MP8), PO Box 31, Birmingham Road, Warwick, CV34 5JL mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/mfcsumm.html Unless stated otherwise above: IBM United Kingdom Limited - Registered in England and Wales with number 741598. Registered office: PO Box 41, North Harbour, Portsmouth, Hampshire PO6 3AU _______________________________________________ Es4-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es4-discuss
