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From: John Levine <johnl@taugh.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: evolution of arithmetic, was bytes, The joy of FORTRAN
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2025 03:05:42 -0000 (UTC)
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According to Waldek Hebisch <antispam@fricas.org>:
>In alt.folklore.computers Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>> On Sun, 2 Mar 2025 14:58:22 -0000 (UTC), Waldek Hebisch wrote:
>> 
>>> IBM deemed decimal arithmetic to be necessary for comercial market.
>> 
>> Interesting to see a recognition nowadays that even scientific users might 
>> be interested in decimal arithmetic, too. Look at how the latest version 
>> of the IEEE 754 spec includes decimal data types in addition to the 
>> traditional binary ones.
>
>Pushing decimal numbers into modern hardware is practical idiocracy.
>Basically, IBM wants to have a selling point so they pushed inclusion
>in standards. ...

Yes, but.  Decimal floating point is not the same as binary floating point.
Its goal is to provide predictable decimal rounding, which is important
in many financial calculations.  Forty years ago I implemented the financial
functions like bond pricing for Javelin.  That required simulating decimal
rounding with binary arithmetic, which was quite painful.  If DFP makes it
easier to get correct rounding on zillion dollar financial calculations it
could well be worth the cost.

That's different from BCD integer arithmetic which I agree long ago stopped
making sense.

-- 
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly