[Virtualacorn-list] Floating point arithmetic

[David J. Ruck]

ATimbrell at aol.com wrote:
> VRPC's use the floating point emulator in RISC OS, rather than the
> floating point unit built into the host machines CPU. We did investigate
> a "soft floating point" podule to provide enhanced FPU performance - but
> there is so little RISC OS software that really makes use of floating
> point - so it wasn't considered worthwhile.

There is a vicious cycle of floating point being slow so no software uses
it, and no software uses it so its not worth accelarating floating point.

Its implementation in VRPC depends on whether you see the product as tool
to allow the declining usage of legacy RISC OS software, or now that
emulation is the only the only option for RISC OS on future machines, you
want to foster any new software development.

I would have thought you'd see the opportunity for a tie in with future
versions of RISC OS 6, featuring enhanced floating point on VRPC.

Cheers
---Dave

-- 
Email: druck at druck.org.uk
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