From: user5857@newsgrouper.org.invalid   
      
   anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) posted:   
      
   > John Levine  writes:   
   > >Software implmentations of DFP would be slow, but if you know what you are   
   > >doing you can get the correctly rounded declmal results using BFP which I   
   > >would think would be faster.   
   >   
   > If you know what you are doing, you use fixed point for those   
   > financial applications which DFP targets, because that's what finance   
   > used in the old days, and what they laid down in their rules (and   
   > still do; the Euro conversion (early 2000s) has to happen with 4   
   > decimal digits after the decimal point; which is noted as unusual,   
   > apparently 2 or 3 digits are more common).  And whenever I bring that   
   > up, it is explained to me that DFP actually behaves like fixed point.   
   > Which leads to the question why one would use DFP rather than fixed   
   > point.   
      
   So, would it not be easier and faster to simply make a densely-packed   
   128-bit Fixed-Point decimal function unit ?!? A rounding mode, and a   
   number of digits below the decimal point, in a control register ???!!!   
      
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   > - anton   
      
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