Re:Arithmetic in Computer Hardware
by gumby on Friday November 17, 2023 @10:35AM
(#38304980)
I love IEEE-754 because it’s so trivially simple to understand at the surface level and at the same time deeply complex. A short standard followed by an enormous number of detailed, non-obvious corner cases that occur in the real world and that all had to be handled by the standard. And it has really stood the test of time!
It’s a good example of something produced by some very smart people with deep theoretical knowledge and deep experience in both things that had worked and even more things that had seemed like a good idea at the time but had turned out to be problematic in practice.
It’s a fascinating standard. The process was like the IETF’s but deeper, which is rarely possible.
(I realize the word “deep” was used a lot in this comment, but it seems appropriate)
It’s a good example of something produced by some very smart people with deep theoretical knowledge and deep experience in both things that had worked and even more things that had seemed like a good idea at the time but had turned out to be problematic in practice.
It’s a fascinating standard. The process was like the IETF’s but deeper, which is rarely possible.
(I realize the word “deep” was used a lot in this comment, but it seems appropriate)