Quoting "Bert Freudenberg" <bert at freudenbergs.de>:

> On 15.03.2009, at 02:51, Colin Putney wrote:
>
>> Are floats that important?
>
> For interactive graphics they are, very much, yes, and that is one  
> of the major reasons for Squeak to exist.
>
> But even in general, having Float arithmetic is so convenient to  
> developers that it crept into many places that don't even really  
> need it. In an image that is not that important to you, try making  
> Float>>sqrt do "self halt", and then move a window for example.
>
> Or take the OLPC hardware designers - they went for the lowest-power  
> chip that had a decent floating point unit (or at least that was a  
> major factor) because there is so much software out there that  
> relies on float support and that does not perform adequately with  
> emulation.
>
> - Bert -
>
>
>
>

At least some processors used in graphics-based game devices use  
'fixed-point arithmetic' instead of floats. These are, in fact, a  
compromise between integers and floats. Would that be an approach  
worth looking at?

Ivan