[Virtualacorn-list] Floating point arithmetic

[ralph_valmai at ntlworld.com]

In message <48EE740B.5070905 at netvision.net.il>
          Michael Ben-Gershon <mybg at netvision.net.il> wrote:

> ATimbrell at aol.com wrote:
>> In a message dated 09/10/2008 10:33:23 GMT Daylight Time,

>> 
>> 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.
>> 
> I have a very large Fireworkz sheet collection which makes very heavy
> use of trigonometrical functions. It takes about 5 minutes to
> recalculate on my Iyonix (it really is very big - about 60 lines and
> 40 columns). If I were to run it under VRPC if the Iyonix packed up
> and I was forced to run it under a fast windows desktop machine,
> better floating point support would be a major advantage (I currently
> have one licence for VRPC for my laptop machine).
> 
Thanks for that, Michael. However, I was hoping that more people would 
respond saying "yes please" to give Aaron some idea of how 
commercially successful such a development would be. Quite properly, 
love isn't the only motive he has for developing VA.

I would be prepared to pay for an up-grade to VA to provide enhanced 
floating point performance, and I would have probably bought it 
earlier if it had been present.

Is there anyone else out there who feels the same?

Ralph


-- 

Ralph & Valmai Stevens
In leafy Epping