On Fri, Dec 20, 2002 at 09:20:26 +0000, Mike Rawes wrote: > The only sound argument I have found for using integer fixed point over > float can be summed up in two words: > > Denormal Number > > Although deft coding can alleviate it somewhat, I can only hope that > with the Itanium, Opteron or whatever, this is no longer a problem!
You can tell the SSE unit(s) to remove them automatically and SSE is the only (or main?) way of doing arithmetic on the Itanium IIRC. I haven't read up on the Opteron. But even in 387 denormal numbers are easy to stamp on if you find them. - Steve
