Re: ancient floating point, These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations

Path	csiph.com!xmission!usenet.csail.mit.edu!news.iecc.com!.POSTED.news.iecc.com!nerds-end
From	Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de>
Newsgroups	comp.compilers
Subject	Re: ancient floating point, These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations
Date	Fri, 16 Jul 2021 18:31:05 +0200
Organization	Compilers Central
Lines	21
Sender	news@iecc.com
Approved	comp.compilers@iecc.com
Message-ID	<21-07-016@comp.compilers> (permalink)
References	<21-07-004@comp.compilers> <21-07-012@comp.compilers>
Mime-Version	1.0
Content-Type	text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding	8bit
Injection-Info	gal.iecc.com; posting-host="news.iecc.com:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970"; logging-data="20240"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@iecc.com"
Keywords	architecture, history, comment
Posted-Date	16 Jul 2021 12:41:00 EDT
X-submission-address	compilers@iecc.com
X-moderator-address	compilers-request@iecc.com
X-FAQ-and-archives	http://compilers.iecc.com
Content-Language	en-US
In-Reply-To	<21-07-012@comp.compilers>
Xref	csiph.com comp.compilers:2684

Show key headers only | View raw

>> any floating point hardware until the IBM 704 in 1954
>
> It is said that the Z3 (1941) was designed with floating-point.
>
> […]
> [I don't think the Z3 was ever built other than as a much later
> retrocomputing project.  Von Neumann apparently considered floating
> point for the EDVAC and IAS machine but rejected it as too complex
> and anyway doing the scaling in software was easy, which it
> probably was if you were Von Neumann. -John]

AFAIK, the Z1 (built in 1939, working but like many early computers not
very reliable, working, destroyed 1944, working replica in a museum in
Berlin), the Z3 (built in 1941, destroyed 1943, working replica in a
museum in Hünfeld), the Z4 (built 1945, in use until 1959, original in a
museum in Munich) and the Z5 (built 1953, in use until 1958, current
whereabouts unknown, probably scrapped) all have binary floating-point.

Philipp
[I've seen the replica Z1, which is entirely mechanical.  I didn't realize
it used floating point. -John]

Back to comp.compilers | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar

Thread

These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations versus other, non-arithmetic computations? Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org> - 2021-07-14 18:30 +0000
  Re: These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations versus other, non-arithmetic computations? gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2021-07-15 02:31 -0700
    Re: These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations versus other, non-arithmetic computations? Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@netscape.net> - 2021-07-15 22:02 +0200
    Re: These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations versus other, non-arithmetic computations? "Robin Vowels" <robin51@dodo.com.au> - 2021-07-16 14:47 +1000
    Re: fast arithmetic hardware, was These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2021-07-15 23:49 -0700
      Re: fast arithmetic hardware, was These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2021-07-16 16:22 -0400
  Re: These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations versus other, non-arithmetic computations? "Robin Vowels" <robin51@dodo.com.au> - 2021-07-16 15:12 +1000
    Re: ancient floating point, These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2021-07-16 18:31 +0200
      Re: ancient floating point, These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@netscape.net> - 2021-07-17 23:14 +0200
  Re: These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations versus other, non-arithmetic computations? Derek Jones <derek@NOSPAM-knosof.co.uk> - 2021-07-19 15:35 +0100
  Re: These days what percentage of a CPU's work involves doing arithmetic computations versus other, non-arithmetic computations? "minf...@arcor.de" <minforth@arcor.de> - 2021-07-27 14:07 -0700

csiph-web