hope this does not repeat what somebody else may have already said or is already known.. in that case feel free to ignore
This also may need amendment but here is what i has heard long time back.. logic required to implement a floating point arithmetic mechanism is complex than that required for processing integers (probably has got something to do with fitting transistors on thin wafer...) so in order to avoid exceeding the boundaries permitted with each time technology upgrade people try to do same arithmetic using integers. This affects the manufacturing costs of the chip.. Costs in terms of space on wafer and in terms of few other things so originally the trade off was to use integer arithmetic to achieve the same result. It also required CPU more clock cycles to perform floating point arithmetic than that required for integers. People have done research (i truely believe) about at what point of time floating point arithmetic becomes economical from CPU utilization point of view... But again as i would like to point out ***I Am Not A Texpert*** technically speaking :-) At the assembly code (just like finally it boils down to 0.0001 second in 100 mtr hurdles) it boils down to saving cpu cycles or what can be making your code executing fast by going to assembly level etc. etc. etc... (that enough of tech talk for me to get tired for next 10 billion nanosenconds :-) That's when these things matter.. -- ______________________________________________________________________ Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List: (plug-mail@plug.org.in) List Information: http://plug.org.in/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/plug-mail Send 'help' to [EMAIL PROTECTED] for mailing instructions.
