sfloat24 Floating Point DataType - Request for Comments

ponce contact at gam3sfrommars.fr
Sat Apr 5 02:13:14 PDT 2014


Wow many questions. I'll try my best but I'm not the most 
knowledgeable person out there.

On Friday, 4 April 2014 at 01:20:43 UTC, Bill Buckels wrote:
> On Thursday, 3 April 2014 at 21:06:52 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic 
> wrote:
>> 
>> This seems out of place? What about D for .NET?
>
> That was really my question:) If D was to have the sfloat24 
> built-in data type, to what extent would that affect using an 
> interface layer like .NET?
Wouldn't affect.

> Or does anybody use D in .NET? Does anyone care what Microsoft 
> does with their layers?
There was D.NET attempt but it has stalled, conflation of slices 
and dynamic arrays was one of the problems IIRC. So no, I think 
nobody runs D on the CLR.

> How about IOs? Anything precise happening in D over there? OSX?
D runs native there.

> Would the availability of sfloat24 in D expand the use of D in 
> the .NET environment? Or for that matter any environment? 
> Arduino? Raspberry Pi? Bluetooth?

No since D already have custom float, which can be tailored for 
the problem at hand (like you would tailor a fixed-point integer 
to a particular problem).

> Anyone doing FPGA in D on some new contraption that isn't built 
> yet?
Don't think so. FPGA men mostly have contempt for C code 
converted to FPGA code.

> Exactly what are your views on sfloat24 after reading the 
> papers? Rsik versus Reward for any language like D in this case 
> that took a giant leap of faith and decided to provide support 
> for sfloat24?

I personally don't need that type. I would say risk = reward = 0 
:), since custom numerical data-type can be easily implemented in 
D.
Might be useful on small hardware with no accelerated float like 
you suggested.

> Is this just something that electrical engineers are going to 
> use doing experimental programming or has sfloat24 some 
> practical merit that would make it desirable as a built-in data 
> type for the D community.

Well it doesn't need to be builtin anyway, so you can go ahead 
and implement sfloat24.d

> The banking software I wrote back then runs after-hours and 
> nobody much cared if it was COBOL or C++ back then... is it 
> still the same job market today for you even in D? Or does the 
> bank just add a couple more blade servers when things bog-down?
I don't work in this field but performance is still paramount, 
and you can't just tell the customer to add blades, consumption 
and space are important too.

> With the prevalence of blue-tooth and embedded systems today, 
> are there any D programmers who are working in those 
> environments.

There are a few.


> If so, does anyone want it besides scientists? Where's the use 
> case in D? If any?

Very high code reuse through classical OO polymorphism and static 
polymorphism. High performance, productivity and friendliness.
Doing any calculation at compile-time, then generating code out 
of it.
Not dealing with the high cost of writing C++ ;)
A lot of liberty in the way of doing things.

>
> Questions of that nature...
>
> Also is anyone working on a trajectory calculation for a lunar 
> landing in D? My friend Jack Crenshaw is with one of the google 
> ranger groups... but I don't get out much so I don't know what 
> other people do anymore:)
>
> So I thought I should ask.
>
> Bill



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