TonyTebby wrote: > I have always suspected that IEEE format was defined by a committee > whose primary object was to ensure that "standard" floating point > numbers could not be handled efficiently in either software or > microcoded hardware using simple integer operations. The idea being > to force the use of excessively complex and expensive FPUs even for > simple calculations.
Well, Intel was the main force behind IEEE 754. And if they hadn't prevailed, we would probably now use the DEC format, pretty similar to 754 but without features like denormalised numbers. The history is documented here http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/ieee754status/754story.html > The result was that a few years ago, Intel FPUs were relatively > slow and full of odd bit errors (from Pentium onwards, they seem to have > improved), Sun FPUs were ridulously expensive, while Motorola FPUs were > fast. Motorola cheated by performing an IEEE to Motorola special format > before trying to perform calculations. Though Motorola was involved in the 754 committee, too... Cheers, Marcel
