Re: +-Inf and NaN

I can think of two reasons that it might be useful to have *shorter* floats:

   - To save time and space.
   - To replicate calculations being done on a short-float platform.

The first one is super important when you're doing huge calculations (ML
training, rendering a movie) or low-latency calculations (ML inference,
real-time graphics) and precision isn't important. But I don't think anyone
is using Maxima for that.

The second one might be useful to a few people.

I can think of one reason that it might be useful to have *longer* floats:

   - To do high-precision calculations much faster than with
   bfloats (either with direct hardware support or with fast libraries).

I don't know how much demand there is for this. bfloats are extremely slow,
but allow *arbitrary *precision.



On Wed, Feb 28, 2024 at 10:40 AM Camm Maguire <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Greetings!
>
> Does anyone care about anything other than 4 or 8 byte floats?  (BTW the
> current definition of single-float in GCL is one of the two permissible
> by the spec for the case of two supported formats.)
>
> gcl:
> >(list  most-positive-short-float  most-positive-single-float
> most-positive-double-float  most-positive-long-float)
>
> (3.4028235S38 1.7976931348623158E308 1.7976931348623158E308
> 1.7976931348623158E308)
>
> sbcl:
> * (list  most-positive-short-float  most-positive-single-float
> most-positive-double-float  most-positive-long-float)
> (3.4028235e38 3.4028235e38 1.7976931348623157d308 1.7976931348623157d308)
>
> clisp:
> [1]> (list  most-positive-short-float  most-positive-single-float
> most-positive-double-float  most-positive-long-float)
> (3.4028s38 3.4028235E38 1.7976931348623157d308
> 8.8080652584198167656L646456992)
>
> ecl:
> > (list  most-positive-short-float  most-positive-single-float
> most-positive-double-float  most-positive-long-float)
> (3.4028235e38 3.4028235e38 1.7976931348623157d308
> 1.189731495357231765l4932)
>
>
>
> Take care,
> --
> Camm Maguire                                        [email protected]
> ==========================================================================
> "The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."  --  Baha'u'llah
>

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