Re: more grist for the mill

[Ivan Godard <igodard@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I just passed the paper on as potentially being of interest to the 
group, but I think I differ with your view of it. In many embedded apps 
needing wide dynamic value range (e.g. FP) and low data rates there will 
be economic constraints which absolutely prohibit FP hardware. That's 
just as true now as 1997, and so long as a buck is a buck it will remain 
true. The difference between a $2 part and a $0.27 part is significant 
when you have unit counts in the millions.

As for 24-bit precision, in many embedded apps the raw data often has 
only 5-10 bits of precision. These apps need range rather than 
precision, and they need speed only as that word is meaningful in an 
8-bit CPU running at 10MHz. So the proposals in the paper seem 
reasonable to me within that application domain, and many other embedded 
domains, and seem likely to remain so.

Ivan

David G Hough 754R work wrote:

> This paper seems to be a collection of bad ideas, probably bad even for
> embedded real time control systems.
>
> Optimizing for software-only implementations is a bad design target since
> most fpops will be executed in hardware.     Nowadays, that's probably true
> even in automative embedded systems, though it might not have been in
> 1997 or so when the paper was probably written.
>
> And using base 8 (or 16) in a short binary format doesn't make much sense
> since 24 significant bits are barely enough as it is for most purposes and
> using higher radices effectively throws away one or two bits.
>
>