Implement the "unum" representation in D ?

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 16 September 2015 at 20:06:43 UTC, deadalnix wrote:
> You know, when you have no idea what you are talking about, you 
> can just move on to something you understand.

Ah, nice move. Back to your usual habits?

> Prefetching would not change anything here. The problem come 
> from variable size encoding, and the challenge it causes for 
> hardware. You can have 100% L1 hit and still have the same 
> problem.

There is _no_ cache. The compiler fully controls the layout of 
the scratchpad.

> That's hardware 101.

Is it?

The core point is this:

1. if there is academic interest (i.e. publishing opportunities) 
you get research

2. if there is research you get new algorithms

3. you get funding

etc

You cannot predict at this point what the future will be like. Is 
it unlikely that anything specific will change status quo? Yes. 
Is it highly probable that something will change status quo? Yes. 
Will it happen over night. No.

50+ years has been invested in floating point design. Will this 
be offset over night, no.

It'll probably take 10+ years before anyone has a different type 
of numerical ALU on their desktop than IEEE754. By that time we 
are in a new era.