Re: FPE Demand?

[fl332@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (John L. Graham)]

Yeppers, that's what I want to do next and see what happens (i.e.,
do speed sensative stuff in extended precision). What still bothers
me is the speed numbers I hear on the 68881 FPE is about a 10 fold
increase in speed. However, AC/BASIC FP operations are _already_
about that fast (i.e., 10x faster than SANE), which suggests that
FPE-like speeds can be achieved on single precision (and I suspect
double precision since AC does all its crunching in double precision)
__through software__. Of course you loose some of the flexibility of
an FPE (like _very_ high precision), but even the orbital calculations
I do don;t use anything beyond double precision. Again, I'd love to see
a readily available FPE, but the problem is interesting to see what
could be achieved with a software fix.

-John
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