From: dxforth@gmail.com   
      
   On 11/07/2025 1:17 pm, Paul Rubin wrote:   
   > dxf  writes:   
   >> When someone begins with the line it rarely ends well:   
   >> "Twenty years ago anarchy threatened floating-point arithmetic."   
   >> One floating-point to rule them all.   
   >   
   > This gives a good perspective on posits:   
   >   
   > https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~demmel/ma221_Fall20/Dinechin_etal_2019.pdf   
   >   
   > Floating point arithmetic in the 1960s (before my time) was really in a   
   > terrible state.  Kahan has written about it.  Apparently IBM 360   
   > floating point arithmetic had to be redesigned after the fact, because   
   > the original version had such weird anomalies.   
      
   But was it the case by the mid/late 70's - or certain individuals saw an   
   opportunity to influence the burgeoning microprocessor market?  Notions of   
   single and double precision already existed in software floating point -   
   most notably in the Microsoft binary format.  We're talking apps such as   
   Microsoft's Fortran for CP/M.  Back then MS was very serious about quashing   
   any issues customers found.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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