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The Great Debate @ARITH23: John Gustafson and William Kahan

dancefan · talk · Watch on YouTube

Computer architecture & CPUsMath & theory (other)

What it is

A 95-minute recorded debate at the ARITH23 computer arithmetic conference between John Gustafson, proponent of unums/posits, and William Kahan, architect of IEEE 754 floating point. They argue the merits of the new number formats versus conventional floats and interval arithmetic.

Why Hacker News recommends it

It is the go-to primary source whenever HN discusses posits versus IEEE floats, valued for Kahan's sharp critique despite the poor audio.

  • 1 people recommended it
  • 1 different months
  • 0 strong recommendations
  • first 2017, last 2023

What HN commenters said

  1. “Audio quality is not great but there are links to slides from Gustafson and Kahan”

    Debate between Gustafson and Kahan on unums versus floats

    celias, 2017-03 · Recommendation · in “Beyond Floating Point: Next-Generation Computer Arithmetic [pdf]”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: unum, posits, ieee 754, interval arithmetic, numerical computing

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