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Fixed Point Vs. Floating Point

m7sages
Beginner
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Hello all,

I am curious about the following:

Based on the latency and throughput numbers for the Pentium 4, I don't see an obvious advantage of fixed point computations over single precision floating point (specifically for multiplication and division operations).

Is this a valid statement?

Is there any speed benefit in converting floating point code to fixed point?

Thanks much,

-Mahesh
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TimP
Honored Contributor III
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Specifically for multiplication and division operations, fixed point will have a serious performance disadvantage on P4. Unless you are supporting a CPU which lacks hardware floating point instructions, you are unlikely to see a benefit in fixed point.
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