Hi everyone, hope you all are doing well.
My name is Alex, and I'm a first-year CS student at Georgia Tech.
I am really interested in the Decimal64 project idea with @scanon, as I am interested programming languages and the opportunity to add functionality to one, through the swift-numerics module. Relevant to this project, I am familiar with Swift and more so with C/C++. I also have some understanding of IEEE-754 standards and basic computer hardware/assembly through my coursework.
I had a few questions about writing a proposal for this project:
-
Could you please explain the different challenges between Decimal64 and Decimal128 that the larger bit-width presents (so what makes Decimal128 a stretch goal to add)?
-
Also, I would be interested to try and optimize the data type for specific hardware. I was wondering how you would suggest to do that? Would there be a way to do that with bit operands or should I mention taking advantage of specific ISAs?
-
What are some of the areas in particular you suggest that I research and include in my proposal?
Thank you and I look forward to hearing back!