Why did early computer designers eschew integers? The Next CEO of Stack OverflowWhat register size did early computers use?What other computers used this floating-point format?Why did so many early microcomputers use the MOS 6502 and variants?Why did keygens play music?Why were early computers named “Mark”?Why did expert systems fall?Why were early personal computer monitors not green?When did “Zen” in computer programming become a thing?History of advanced hardwareWere there any working computers using residue number systems?

It is correct to match light sources with the same color temperature?

Airplane gently rocking its wings during whole flight

Is there an equivalent of cd - for cp or mv

Reference request: Grassmannian and Plucker coordinates in type B, C, D

TikZ: How to fill area with a special pattern?

How to find image of a complex function with given constraints?

Is there a difference between "Fahrstuhl" and "Aufzug"?

Inexact numbers as keys in Association?

What day is it again?

what's the use of '% to gdp' type of variables?

Towers in the ocean; How deep can they be built?

Graph of the history of databases

What flight has the highest ratio of timezone difference to flight time?

Does the Idaho Potato Commission associate potato skins with healthy eating?

Is dried pee considered dirt?

What does "shotgun unity" refer to here in this sentence?

Spaces in which all closed sets are regular closed

What steps are necessary to read a Modern SSD in Medieval Europe?

How do I fit a non linear curve?

Is there a reasonable and studied concept of reduction between regular languages?

What was Carter Burke's job for "the company" in Aliens?

Calculate the Mean mean of two numbers

A question about free fall, velocity, and the height of an object.

Is French Guiana a (hard) EU border?



Why did early computer designers eschew integers?



The Next CEO of Stack OverflowWhat register size did early computers use?What other computers used this floating-point format?Why did so many early microcomputers use the MOS 6502 and variants?Why did keygens play music?Why were early computers named “Mark”?Why did expert systems fall?Why were early personal computer monitors not green?When did “Zen” in computer programming become a thing?History of advanced hardwareWere there any working computers using residue number systems?










4















Several early computer designs regarded a 'word' as representing not an integer, with the bits having values 2^0, 2^1, 2^2, ..., but as representing a fixed-point fraction 2^-1, 2^-2, 2^-3, ...



(For the sake of simplicity in this question I'm ignoring the existence of the sign bit and talk only in terms of positive numbers)



Some examples of this convention are EDVAC, EDSAC, and the IAS machine.



Why was this? To me, having dealt with since the 1970s with machines that have "integers" at base, this seems a strange way to look at it.



Does it affect the machine operation in any way? Addition and subtraction are the same regardless of what you think the bits mean, but I suppose that for multiplication of two N-bit words giving an N-bit result, the choice of which N bits to keep depends on your interpretation. (Integer: you want the "right hand word"; fixed-point fraction, you want the "left hand word").










share|improve this question

















  • 1





    Very early on, it was likely that computers were not considered to be general purpose machines. So if the main task for which a computer was designed involved doing calculations with flractional numbers, prioritizing them over integers would make sense. It seems likely that computers designed for business programs would be more tuned to integers, because money (in the USA) can be treated as pennies, and very little would need to be fractional.

    – RichF
    1 hour ago
















4















Several early computer designs regarded a 'word' as representing not an integer, with the bits having values 2^0, 2^1, 2^2, ..., but as representing a fixed-point fraction 2^-1, 2^-2, 2^-3, ...



(For the sake of simplicity in this question I'm ignoring the existence of the sign bit and talk only in terms of positive numbers)



Some examples of this convention are EDVAC, EDSAC, and the IAS machine.



Why was this? To me, having dealt with since the 1970s with machines that have "integers" at base, this seems a strange way to look at it.



Does it affect the machine operation in any way? Addition and subtraction are the same regardless of what you think the bits mean, but I suppose that for multiplication of two N-bit words giving an N-bit result, the choice of which N bits to keep depends on your interpretation. (Integer: you want the "right hand word"; fixed-point fraction, you want the "left hand word").










share|improve this question

















  • 1





    Very early on, it was likely that computers were not considered to be general purpose machines. So if the main task for which a computer was designed involved doing calculations with flractional numbers, prioritizing them over integers would make sense. It seems likely that computers designed for business programs would be more tuned to integers, because money (in the USA) can be treated as pennies, and very little would need to be fractional.

    – RichF
    1 hour ago














4












4








4








Several early computer designs regarded a 'word' as representing not an integer, with the bits having values 2^0, 2^1, 2^2, ..., but as representing a fixed-point fraction 2^-1, 2^-2, 2^-3, ...



(For the sake of simplicity in this question I'm ignoring the existence of the sign bit and talk only in terms of positive numbers)



Some examples of this convention are EDVAC, EDSAC, and the IAS machine.



Why was this? To me, having dealt with since the 1970s with machines that have "integers" at base, this seems a strange way to look at it.



Does it affect the machine operation in any way? Addition and subtraction are the same regardless of what you think the bits mean, but I suppose that for multiplication of two N-bit words giving an N-bit result, the choice of which N bits to keep depends on your interpretation. (Integer: you want the "right hand word"; fixed-point fraction, you want the "left hand word").










share|improve this question














Several early computer designs regarded a 'word' as representing not an integer, with the bits having values 2^0, 2^1, 2^2, ..., but as representing a fixed-point fraction 2^-1, 2^-2, 2^-3, ...



(For the sake of simplicity in this question I'm ignoring the existence of the sign bit and talk only in terms of positive numbers)



Some examples of this convention are EDVAC, EDSAC, and the IAS machine.



Why was this? To me, having dealt with since the 1970s with machines that have "integers" at base, this seems a strange way to look at it.



Does it affect the machine operation in any way? Addition and subtraction are the same regardless of what you think the bits mean, but I suppose that for multiplication of two N-bit words giving an N-bit result, the choice of which N bits to keep depends on your interpretation. (Integer: you want the "right hand word"; fixed-point fraction, you want the "left hand word").







history






share|improve this question













share|improve this question











share|improve this question




share|improve this question










asked 1 hour ago









another-daveanother-dave

1,172112




1,172112







  • 1





    Very early on, it was likely that computers were not considered to be general purpose machines. So if the main task for which a computer was designed involved doing calculations with flractional numbers, prioritizing them over integers would make sense. It seems likely that computers designed for business programs would be more tuned to integers, because money (in the USA) can be treated as pennies, and very little would need to be fractional.

    – RichF
    1 hour ago













  • 1





    Very early on, it was likely that computers were not considered to be general purpose machines. So if the main task for which a computer was designed involved doing calculations with flractional numbers, prioritizing them over integers would make sense. It seems likely that computers designed for business programs would be more tuned to integers, because money (in the USA) can be treated as pennies, and very little would need to be fractional.

    – RichF
    1 hour ago








1




1





Very early on, it was likely that computers were not considered to be general purpose machines. So if the main task for which a computer was designed involved doing calculations with flractional numbers, prioritizing them over integers would make sense. It seems likely that computers designed for business programs would be more tuned to integers, because money (in the USA) can be treated as pennies, and very little would need to be fractional.

– RichF
1 hour ago






Very early on, it was likely that computers were not considered to be general purpose machines. So if the main task for which a computer was designed involved doing calculations with flractional numbers, prioritizing them over integers would make sense. It seems likely that computers designed for business programs would be more tuned to integers, because money (in the USA) can be treated as pennies, and very little would need to be fractional.

– RichF
1 hour ago











1 Answer
1






active

oldest

votes


















4














I'd think that it was mostly down to the preferences of John von Neumann at the time. He was a strong advocate of fixed point representations, and early computers were designed with long words to accommodate a large range of numbers that way. You certainly don't need 30-40 bits to cover the most useful integers, but that many were needed if you wanted plenty of digits before and after the decimal point.



By the 1970s though, the costs of integration were such that much smaller word sizes made sense. Minicomputers were commonly 16 bit architectures, and micros 8 bits or sometimes even 4. At that point you needed all the integers you can get, plus floating point had largely replaced fixed point for when you needed decimals.



Nowadays we'd think nothing of using 64 bit integers, of course, but it's a heck of a lot easier to integrate the number of logic gates required for that than it would have been back when they all had to be made out of fragile and expensive vacuum tubes.






share|improve this answer








New contributor




Matthew Barber is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.




















    Your Answer








    StackExchange.ready(function()
    var channelOptions =
    tags: "".split(" "),
    id: "648"
    ;
    initTagRenderer("".split(" "), "".split(" "), channelOptions);

    StackExchange.using("externalEditor", function()
    // Have to fire editor after snippets, if snippets enabled
    if (StackExchange.settings.snippets.snippetsEnabled)
    StackExchange.using("snippets", function()
    createEditor();
    );

    else
    createEditor();

    );

    function createEditor()
    StackExchange.prepareEditor(
    heartbeatType: 'answer',
    autoActivateHeartbeat: false,
    convertImagesToLinks: false,
    noModals: true,
    showLowRepImageUploadWarning: true,
    reputationToPostImages: null,
    bindNavPrevention: true,
    postfix: "",
    imageUploader:
    brandingHtml: "Powered by u003ca class="icon-imgur-white" href="https://imgur.com/"u003eu003c/au003e",
    contentPolicyHtml: "User contributions licensed under u003ca href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"u003ecc by-sa 3.0 with attribution requiredu003c/au003e u003ca href="https://stackoverflow.com/legal/content-policy"u003e(content policy)u003c/au003e",
    allowUrls: true
    ,
    noCode: true, onDemand: true,
    discardSelector: ".discard-answer"
    ,immediatelyShowMarkdownHelp:true
    );



    );













    draft saved

    draft discarded


















    StackExchange.ready(
    function ()
    StackExchange.openid.initPostLogin('.new-post-login', 'https%3a%2f%2fretrocomputing.stackexchange.com%2fquestions%2f9500%2fwhy-did-early-computer-designers-eschew-integers%23new-answer', 'question_page');

    );

    Post as a guest















    Required, but never shown

























    1 Answer
    1






    active

    oldest

    votes








    1 Answer
    1






    active

    oldest

    votes









    active

    oldest

    votes






    active

    oldest

    votes









    4














    I'd think that it was mostly down to the preferences of John von Neumann at the time. He was a strong advocate of fixed point representations, and early computers were designed with long words to accommodate a large range of numbers that way. You certainly don't need 30-40 bits to cover the most useful integers, but that many were needed if you wanted plenty of digits before and after the decimal point.



    By the 1970s though, the costs of integration were such that much smaller word sizes made sense. Minicomputers were commonly 16 bit architectures, and micros 8 bits or sometimes even 4. At that point you needed all the integers you can get, plus floating point had largely replaced fixed point for when you needed decimals.



    Nowadays we'd think nothing of using 64 bit integers, of course, but it's a heck of a lot easier to integrate the number of logic gates required for that than it would have been back when they all had to be made out of fragile and expensive vacuum tubes.






    share|improve this answer








    New contributor




    Matthew Barber is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
    Check out our Code of Conduct.
























      4














      I'd think that it was mostly down to the preferences of John von Neumann at the time. He was a strong advocate of fixed point representations, and early computers were designed with long words to accommodate a large range of numbers that way. You certainly don't need 30-40 bits to cover the most useful integers, but that many were needed if you wanted plenty of digits before and after the decimal point.



      By the 1970s though, the costs of integration were such that much smaller word sizes made sense. Minicomputers were commonly 16 bit architectures, and micros 8 bits or sometimes even 4. At that point you needed all the integers you can get, plus floating point had largely replaced fixed point for when you needed decimals.



      Nowadays we'd think nothing of using 64 bit integers, of course, but it's a heck of a lot easier to integrate the number of logic gates required for that than it would have been back when they all had to be made out of fragile and expensive vacuum tubes.






      share|improve this answer








      New contributor




      Matthew Barber is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
      Check out our Code of Conduct.






















        4












        4








        4







        I'd think that it was mostly down to the preferences of John von Neumann at the time. He was a strong advocate of fixed point representations, and early computers were designed with long words to accommodate a large range of numbers that way. You certainly don't need 30-40 bits to cover the most useful integers, but that many were needed if you wanted plenty of digits before and after the decimal point.



        By the 1970s though, the costs of integration were such that much smaller word sizes made sense. Minicomputers were commonly 16 bit architectures, and micros 8 bits or sometimes even 4. At that point you needed all the integers you can get, plus floating point had largely replaced fixed point for when you needed decimals.



        Nowadays we'd think nothing of using 64 bit integers, of course, but it's a heck of a lot easier to integrate the number of logic gates required for that than it would have been back when they all had to be made out of fragile and expensive vacuum tubes.






        share|improve this answer








        New contributor




        Matthew Barber is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
        Check out our Code of Conduct.










        I'd think that it was mostly down to the preferences of John von Neumann at the time. He was a strong advocate of fixed point representations, and early computers were designed with long words to accommodate a large range of numbers that way. You certainly don't need 30-40 bits to cover the most useful integers, but that many were needed if you wanted plenty of digits before and after the decimal point.



        By the 1970s though, the costs of integration were such that much smaller word sizes made sense. Minicomputers were commonly 16 bit architectures, and micros 8 bits or sometimes even 4. At that point you needed all the integers you can get, plus floating point had largely replaced fixed point for when you needed decimals.



        Nowadays we'd think nothing of using 64 bit integers, of course, but it's a heck of a lot easier to integrate the number of logic gates required for that than it would have been back when they all had to be made out of fragile and expensive vacuum tubes.







        share|improve this answer








        New contributor




        Matthew Barber is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
        Check out our Code of Conduct.









        share|improve this answer



        share|improve this answer






        New contributor




        Matthew Barber is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
        Check out our Code of Conduct.









        answered 45 mins ago









        Matthew BarberMatthew Barber

        1411




        1411




        New contributor




        Matthew Barber is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
        Check out our Code of Conduct.





        New contributor





        Matthew Barber is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
        Check out our Code of Conduct.






        Matthew Barber is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
        Check out our Code of Conduct.



























            draft saved

            draft discarded
















































            Thanks for contributing an answer to Retrocomputing Stack Exchange!


            • Please be sure to answer the question. Provide details and share your research!

            But avoid


            • Asking for help, clarification, or responding to other answers.

            • Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience.

            To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers.




            draft saved


            draft discarded














            StackExchange.ready(
            function ()
            StackExchange.openid.initPostLogin('.new-post-login', 'https%3a%2f%2fretrocomputing.stackexchange.com%2fquestions%2f9500%2fwhy-did-early-computer-designers-eschew-integers%23new-answer', 'question_page');

            );

            Post as a guest















            Required, but never shown





















































            Required, but never shown














            Required, but never shown












            Required, but never shown







            Required, but never shown

































            Required, but never shown














            Required, but never shown












            Required, but never shown







            Required, but never shown







            Popular posts from this blog

            Oświęcim Innehåll Historia | Källor | Externa länkar | Navigeringsmeny50°2′18″N 19°13′17″Ö / 50.03833°N 19.22139°Ö / 50.03833; 19.2213950°2′18″N 19°13′17″Ö / 50.03833°N 19.22139°Ö / 50.03833; 19.221393089658Nordisk familjebok, AuschwitzInsidan tro och existensJewish Community i OświęcimAuschwitz Jewish Center: MuseumAuschwitz Jewish Center

            Valle di Casies Indice Geografia fisica | Origini del nome | Storia | Società | Amministrazione | Sport | Note | Bibliografia | Voci correlate | Altri progetti | Collegamenti esterni | Menu di navigazione46°46′N 12°11′E / 46.766667°N 12.183333°E46.766667; 12.183333 (Valle di Casies)46°46′N 12°11′E / 46.766667°N 12.183333°E46.766667; 12.183333 (Valle di Casies)Sito istituzionaleAstat Censimento della popolazione 2011 - Determinazione della consistenza dei tre gruppi linguistici della Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano-Alto Adige - giugno 2012Numeri e fattiValle di CasiesDato IstatTabella dei gradi/giorno dei Comuni italiani raggruppati per Regione e Provincia26 agosto 1993, n. 412Heraldry of the World: GsiesStatistiche I.StatValCasies.comWikimedia CommonsWikimedia CommonsValle di CasiesSito ufficialeValle di CasiesMM14870458910042978-6

            Typsetting diagram chases (with TikZ?) Announcing the arrival of Valued Associate #679: Cesar Manara Planned maintenance scheduled April 17/18, 2019 at 00:00UTC (8:00pm US/Eastern)How to define the default vertical distance between nodes?Draw edge on arcNumerical conditional within tikz keys?TikZ: Drawing an arc from an intersection to an intersectionDrawing rectilinear curves in Tikz, aka an Etch-a-Sketch drawingLine up nested tikz enviroments or how to get rid of themHow to place nodes in an absolute coordinate system in tikzCommutative diagram with curve connecting between nodesTikz with standalone: pinning tikz coordinates to page cmDrawing a Decision Diagram with Tikz and layout manager