On 27/07/2010 8:29 AM, Darren New wrote:
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/23/ibm_z196_mainframe_processor/
>
> (Big-ass mainframe CPUs)
>
> I didn't know people were still putting decimal math circuits into CPUs.
>

Used to program the ancestors of this in assembler.  S370 and S390 
instruction sets.  The 'packed decimal' format was really perfect for 
banks and similar.  Hardware memory to memory add, subtract, multiply 
large precision numerics with exact precision.  'ZAP' (Zero and Add 
Packed) was one of the most common instructions in almost any assembler 
program.  And the main numeric data type in IBM COBOL translated to 
these underlying instructions.

There is a fair chance that your money is still held and processed in 
this format today.

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