Speed of floating point double vs single precision

  • Thread starter Thread starter Beamguy
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Beamguy

I am writing a numerical program and am pondering which precision to use for floating
point numbers. A bunch of years back there was a class of computers where it became
faster to do floating point arithmetic in double precision, since the hardware floating
point was double precision. I am not sure about PC's. Are hardware floating point
units on PC's double or single precision these days, and based on this which is faster
to use?

Thanks.
 
IEEE Standard 754 floating point numbers
http://stevehollasch.com/cgindex/coding/ieeefloat.html

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| I am writing a numerical program and am pondering which precision to use for floating
| point numbers. A bunch of years back there was a class of computers where it became
| faster to do floating point arithmetic in double precision, since the hardware floating
| point was double precision. I am not sure about PC's. Are hardware floating point
| units on PC's double or single precision these days, and based on this which is faster
| to use?
|
| Thanks.
 
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