> Which applications were you thinking of, specifically? > Surprisingly little applications actually use FP, and even fewer _need_ to > use FP (they were just written that way because it is taken for granted > that x86 processors higher than 486DX always have an FP unit). An example > is XAudio who, instead of struggling to get the NetWinder to play MP3s > using floating point emulation, simply rewrote it to use the StrongArm > integer multiply instructions, which are very fast (1 or 2 instructions > for a 32*32 multiply). The real power of a WearComp system is the ability to alter one's visual perception of reality, which involves a great many floating point calculations. Also, intelligence signal processing involves floating point arithmetic. Even the Blind Vision project of the 1980s involved floating point arithmetic. Scientific and engineering compuation often involves F.P. calculations. Things like word processing can be done on a hand held device, but it is the ability to alter the visual perception of reality (e.g. Personal Imaging) that sets WearComp apart from carryable devices. Personal Imaging is an application domain where WearComp is required (e.g. it cannot readily be done on hand held devices), and in fact, is most likely the "killer app" (or "living app") of WearComp. Thus it is very desirable to think about support for F.P. and other abstractions (like complex arithmetic, or butterfly operations that can run in hardware with low level instructions). Of course these can be rewritten to use integer computation, and in fact integer computation can be rewritten to use binary 1 bit manipulations. Programming everything in low level binary instructions (e.g. one could argue even that integer multiply is not needed, as in the 6502 WearComp systems that were programmed in hand assembled machine instructions) is possible but more time consuming. High level mathematical abstractions and their actual implementation in hardware, however, serve to make the system easier to use and program. steve http://wearcomp.org/mann.html http://wearcam.org/wearpubs.html > --------------- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. -------------- > : Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham : > -------------------- http://www.linuxhacker.org/ -------------------- -- Subcription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with subject of "subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" toWear-Hard Mailing List Archive (searchable): http://wearables.ml.org
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