Why do you need a 387 to run X11R3?
Steve Nuchia
steve at nuchat.UUCP
Sat Mar 10 17:21:04 AEST 1990
In article <9868 at batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> cchase at ee.cornell.edu (Craig Chase) writes:
>I can see the fast cpu and RAM parts, but why the floating point? I
When I cut my teeth, unix systems without FP hardware did the
emulation thing in library routines that were 10 to mayby
100 time slower than hardware, so a program that would spend
10% of its time doing FP would slow down by less than ten times.
For the amount of FP I do, I can live with that.
Unfortunately, the 386 sysV unixes do their FP in the kernel by
taking a trap on the unimplemented intruction. This is _real_
slow. Slow enough that simple awk scripts can take hours to
slog through a few hundred K of input. Get the '87 -- its
cheaper and easier than wishing you had until you do.
--
Steve Nuchia South Coast Computing Services (713) 964-2462
"You have no scars on your face, and you cannot handle pressure." - Billy Joel
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