extend methods of decimal module

[Mark H. Harris]

On Friday, February 28, 2014 1:39:11 PM UTC-6, Mark H. Harris wrote:
> On Friday, February 28, 2014 1:34:27 AM UTC-6, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> > Now that Python has a fast C implementation of Decimal, I would be happy 
> 
> > for Python 4000 to default to decimal floats, and require special syntax 
> 
> > for binary floats. Say, 0.1b if you want a binary float, and 0.1 for a 
> 
> > decimal.
> 
> > 
> 
> > Steven
> 
> 
> 
> Just a side note on how fast... Stefan Krah's performance specs state 120x improvement on many multiplication computations (like PI for instance)...  well, its not hype.
> 
> 
> 
> On my P7350 dual core 2Ghz Intel box (2009 mac mini) running Gnu/Linux, I used the piagm(n) AGM routine from my dmath.py library to benchmark against my own C routines, BC, and a couple of other math packages.  The results were phenomenal...  my processor is a low-end gem as compared to modern SOTA processors out there, and even yet:
> 
> 
> 
>  1 million digits of PI ---  13 minutes
> 
> 10 million digits of PI ---  3 hours  55 minutes
> 

Oh, rats(), I forgot the comparison....

Py3.2 [ 1 million digits : 21 hours 21 minutes ] --> Py3.3.4 [ 1 million digits : 13 minutes ]

    ...  that is astounding.   All I did was install  3.3.4,  no change in the AGM routine.

Cheers