Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Chambers <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote:
> > Perhaps if
> > Intel surprises everyone, and releases their next graphics chip as a
> > double precision FP monsters, we'd be able to take advantage of that,
>
>   Exactly how would it be different from current FPUs?
>
> --
>                                                           - Warp

There are 2 typical variants of FPU around right now - 32 bit and 64 bit,
matching the type of processor they are included on.  Having a 64 bit FPU
is necessary for doing 64 bit arithmetic in hardware - but is not
sufficient.  It would also require a 64 bit operating system such as
windows XP x64, vista 64-bit, or a version of Unix compiled for 64 bit
systems.  All mainstream 64 bit processors can run in a limited 32-bit mode
to back-support 32 bit execution, if this is the case the precision
available is still only 32 bit in hardware.

Software packages exist for manipulating floating point data in various
extended formats - but as Mr. Chambers mentioned they are not as efficient
as hardware support.

Justin

Post a reply to this message