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- Xref: sparky comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit:830 comp.unix.sysv386:17467
- Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,comp.unix.sysv386
- Path: sparky!uunet!spooky!witr
- From: witr@rwwa.COM (Robert Withrow)
- Subject: Re: PC-Clone UNIX Hardware Buyer's Guide
- Message-ID: <1992Dec16.222341.17217@rwwa.COM>
- Sender: news@rwwa.COM (News Administrator)
- Nntp-Posting-Host: spooky
- Reply-To: witr@rwwa.com
- Organization: R.W. Withrow Associates
- References: <ByyLw8.Jrz@hfglobe.intel.com> <id.1SOV.762@ferranti.com> <1992Dec14.205445.6059@crd.ge.com> <id.D5VV.O87@ferranti.com>
- Distribution: usa
- Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 22:23:41 GMT
- Lines: 22
-
- In article <id.D5VV.O87@ferranti.com>, peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva)
- writes:
-
- | Unless
- | you do a LOT of floating point, the FPU is about as useful as string of
- | christmas lights.
-
- Unfortunately, it seems that almost anything can involve a lot of floating point.
- One surprising example is DVIPS. The FPU changes document conversions that
- used to take 5 or 10 minutes into 5 or 10 seconds...
-
- If you write lots of documents that you print using DVIPS, you might prefer
- the FPU to an extra 8MB.
-
- As always, rules-of-thumb must be applied with great care as they can be wrong as
- often as they are right. There is no substitute for understanding the
- problem you are trying to solve. If you think ``I don't do number-crunching
- so I must not need an FPU'' you may be sorely disappointed.
-
- --
- Robert Withrow, Tel: +1 617 598 4480, Fax: +1 617 598 4430, Net: witr@rwwa.COM
- R.W. Withrow Associates, 21 Railroad Ave, Swampscott MA 01907-1821 USA
-