From: Seebs <usenet-nospam@...>
Date: 2010-01-15T17:00:14+09:00
Subject: Re: Float Points error

On 2010-01-15, Phillip Gawlowski <pg@thimian.com> wrote:
> You'll loose time when computing with Floats, anyway, since outside of 
> vector-based CPUs (IIRC), the performance of performing maths on floats 
> is terrible (in relative terms).

This is nowhere near as true as it used to be.  Some quickie tests on an x86
revealed that, for some common operations, floating point math was FASTER than
integer!  It depends a lot on what you're trying to do.  Since modernish CPUs
may well be able to do both float and integer operations simultaneously, an
integer loop of floating point operations may be very fast...

... Of course, that doesn't necessarily tell you much about *Ruby* floats,
where I'd expect FixNum to beat Float by a huge margin.

-s
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