Well it might be even worse, assuming you're toying in a higher level language than assembly; in that case the compiler might optimize your code to SIMD code in which case you no longer have 80 bits long doubles, but 64 bits doubles, and 52 bits mantissa; which exactly is the idea of SIMD.

80 bits really is not a very useful size at all (though i realize you can do a few tricks with it which can give you up to 62 bits significance in 64 bits integers, but that's for a few exceptionnel nerds who try to get the maximum out of something, which doesn't describe 99.99% of the programming population).

Vincent
----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Hahn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Vincent Diepeveen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <beowulf@beowulf.org>
Sent: Friday, November 24, 2006 7:25 PM
Subject: Re: [Beowulf] Question about amd64 architecture and floating pointoperations


Hopefully your 80 bits logics code is not critical to anything.
I wouldn't count at keeping the entire 62 bits (?) mantissa.

Context switch and dang it's gone.

why do you think that?


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