Always false float comparisons

[deadalnix via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 16 May 2016 at 10:29:02 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 5/16/16 2:46 AM, Walter Bright wrote:
>> I used to do numerics work professionally. Most of the 
>> troubles I had
>> were catastrophic loss of precision. Accumulated roundoff 
>> errors when
>> doing numerical integration or matrix inversion are major 
>> problems. 80
>> bits helps dramatically with that.
>
> Aren't good algorithms helping dramatically with that?
>
> Also, do you have a theory that reconciles your assessment of 
> the importance of 80-bit math with the fact that the computing 
> world is moving away from it? 
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3206101/extended-80-bit-double-floating-point-in-x87-not-sse2-we-dont-miss-it
>
>
> Andrei

Regardless of the compiler actually doing it or not, the argument 
that extra precision is a problem is self defeating. I don't 
think argument for speed have been raised so far.