Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> And, like floating point, it would be quite the PITA to translate scaled 
> integer numbers into something you could print efficiently, compared to 
> using BCD.

  This CPU broke the 5 GHz barrier. I don't think printing efficiency is
an issue.

> Why would plain integers be *better* than packed BCD for this sort of 
> application?

  2's complement binary registers require simpler circuitry to be operated
with, compared to BCD registers, hence making the CPU design simpler (and
hence less expensive).

  The value range of BCD registers is smaller than that of 2's complement
binary registers.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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