Date: Wed, 5 Mar 1997 09:26:07 +0800 (GMT)
From: Orlando Andico <orly AT gibson DOT eee DOT upd DOT edu DOT ph>
To: Bryan Murphy <bryan AT alpha DOT hcst DOT com>
cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Floating Point vs. Fixed Point
In-Reply-To: <5fhlm2$du6@alpha.hcst.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SGI.3.93.970305092443.8941J-100000@gibson.eee.upd.edu.ph>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On 4 Mar 1997, Bryan Murphy wrote:

> I'm curious as to what advantages fixed point arithmatic has 
> over floating point in relation to today's Pentiums and Pentium
> pro's.  I know traditionally Fixed point has been quicker, but
> is it losing that advantage?  Does MMX also promote the use of 
> floating point over fixed point?  A lot of programs are being
> written using floating point now a days, and I'm curious if I
> should follow.
> 

Which brings up another point: wasn't Quake targeted at Pentiums and up?
then why is there a slew of 16.16 fixedpoint code in it? doesn't the
Pentium run FP faster than integer??? (snarl.. this is one of the reasons
I've hit a snag on my Quake-on-SGI-and-SPARC port -- those &*%^^ fixed
point routines are in Intel assembly <ack>)

.-----------------------------------------------------------------.
| Orlando Andico                email: orly AT gibson DOT eee DOT upd DOT edu DOT ph |
| IRC Lab/EE Dept/UP Diliman   http://gibson.eee.upd.edu.ph/~orly |
|  "through adventure we are not adventuresome" -- 10000 Maniacs  |
`-----------------------------------------------------------------'