4 ms·
You mean full-precision integer representations? A percentage is effectively this -- and floats are often multipliers on integers which are "holding the precis
by mjburgess 5y ago
You mean full-precision integer representations?
A percentage is effectively this -- and floats are often multipliers on integers which are "holding the precision".
However it isn't clear what standards sorts of arithmetical use cases storing two integers helps with (over, say, integer & float, etc.).
- k__ 5y agoI'm not sure either, that's why I asked. :D
- mjburgess 5y agoI'm not an expert but, certainly, (1) limited memory on historical machines necessitated a small-width representation of a real number; (2) limited cpus meant simple operations needed to be applied to this small-width representation in one go. Ie., your CPU is just a system for taking bit patterns and producing new bit patterns: (0000 0000) -> (1010 0101). So you want each individual number to be of a size the processor can operate on in one pass. By using two integers you gain some capacity (ie., you can still overflow), but lose memory and compute performance.