On 4 Dec 2004 20:15:09 -0500, (DoN. Nichols)
wrote:

In article ,
Lawrence Glickman wrote:
On 04 Dec 2004 19:00:43 GMT, Ian Stirling
wrote:

In rec.crafts.metalworking Lawrence Glickman wrote:
On 04 Dec 2004 17:10:21 GMT, Ian Stirling
wrote:

[ ... ]

In some tasks, this can be the limiting factor for calculation.

No calculation my computer is ever going to need to make.
We're talking apples and oranges here. I'm talking about getting a
motorcycle up to 200 mph, you're talking about taking a truck up to
200 mph. Yes, they are going to require different engines.

If you do image processing, you will need the big RAM, or a bit
swap file. The image processing programs like to have the *whole* image
in RAM -- even if it has to use swap space to do it. :-)

Is why I stopped using Photoshop.
I have no need for high-resolution photographic illustrations for
magazine covers and full-page advertisements.

I process hundreds of personal digital images at a time, and with the
programs I use, the work is done completely without my involvement in
a few minutes. Of course, I had to initially set up the programming
to do what I wanted it to do, but now it is automated. Good enough to
better for 99.88% of my photos.

For my purposes ( motorcycle ), the load my CPU has to deal with,
things appear normal in human time. I am not simulating nuclear
detonations in virtual reality. Any nanosecond speed differences are
not perceptible to this human unit.

I just performed 170! ( factorial of 170 ). That's the limit on my
*engine*

I got an answer of 7.2574E+306 before I could even take my finger off
the enter key. Is that not fast enough for a *consumer computer*

My SS-5 (a mere 170 MHz CPU speed) does that one at:

================================================== ====================
izalco:dnichols 20:09 time dc /tmp/trial-170
7257415615307998967396728211129263114716991681296 4513765435777989005\
6184340170615785235074924261745951149099123783852 0776666022565442753\
0253289007732075109024004302800582956039666125996 5825710439855829425\
7568966313439612262571094946806711205568880457193 3402126614528000000\
00000000000000000000000000000000000
0.05u 0.05s 0:00.16 62.5%
================================================== ====================
A total of 0.1 second between user and system time, and 0:00.16
seconds wall clock time (with the system doing other things at the same
time.)

307 digits, which makes your 3.2574E+306 pretty close, but it is
missing a lot of digits for true precision.

Do you have a way to do it in multi-precision integer math?

Not at this time, no.
Otoh, if I needed to do that for a good reason, I would get hold of
the necessary programming.

For rendering analog video into digital video, as TM suggested, I
haven't explored that yet. Not sure I have enough interest in doing
so to justify the investment in time and money.

Maybe DVD is more permanent than tape, but it isn't forever.
Delamination is a problem, along with the growth of anaerobic
organisms that attack the media. I think you will be lucky to get 5
years out of DVD even if it is stored in a controlled environment.
The stuff isn't as archival as people would lead you to believe.

Lg