4 hundred quadrillonth?

[Dave Angel]

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> In message <mailman.525.1242941777.8015.python-list at python.org>, Christian 
> Heimes wrote:
>
>   
>> Welcome to IEEE 754 floating point land! :)
>>     
>
> It used to be worse in the days before IEEE 754 became widespread. Anybody 
> remember a certain Prof William Kahan from Berkeley, and the foreword he 
> wrote to the Apple Numerics Manual, 2nd Edition, published in 1988? It's 
> such a classic piece that I think it should be posted somewhere...
>
>
>   
I remember the professor.  He was responsible for large parts of the 
Intel 8087 specification, which later got mostly codified as IEEE 754.  
In those days, the 8087 was a couple hundred extra dollars, so few 
machines had one.  And the software simulation was horribly slow (on a 
4.7 mhz machine).  So most compilers would have two math libraries.  If 
you wanted 8087 equivalence, and the hardware wasn't there, it was dog 
slow.  On the other hand, if you specified the other math package, it 
didn't benefit at all from the presence of the 8087.