Timeline for Why do we still use floats?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
4 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 23, 2014 at 7:18 | comment | added | phresnel | 1.a) Of course they are easy to use. Just a matter of abstraction. And of course they are not a programming technique, but a type of data. 1.b) Heard of SSE and data parallel programming? 2.a) Yet you have dedicated areas on the CPU which do the math for you (e.g. the adder), otherwise a (general purpose) CPU would be non-functional. You also know that nowadays there are no FPUs on commodity x86 systems anymore? 2.b): Your text is full of misinformation. Please review the wikipedia entry for Floating Points (sidenote: also, it's "Mantissa", not "Mantra"). | |
| Jan 22, 2014 at 17:55 | comment | added | jokoon | 1) Because fixed point can be mere programming technique. 2) because there is nothing to optimize on int, or it's so trivial that it doesn't take a lot of transistors. Floats are tricky because there is a mantra and an exponent. And maybe other reason. Historically, floating point was not a native programming option, it was one of the thing microsoft implemented into its OS so it was better for developers. | |
| Jan 20, 2014 at 15:30 | comment | added | phresnel | Why should 0.542*12442 not be possible with fixed point numbers? Why do you think that integers do not have a dedicated place on the CPU? | |
| Jan 17, 2014 at 20:41 | history | answered | jokoon | CC BY-SA 3.0 |