(j3.2006) Liaison to IFIP WG 2.5

[Andy Vaught]

On Wed, 22 Aug 2007, Van Snyder wrote:

> On Wed, 2007-08-22 at 19:59 +0100, Lawrie Schonfelder wrote:
> > I thought intervals were about accuracy critical not performance
> > critical!
> 
> In many applications, if performance costs 100 times as much, accuracy
> will be reluctantly sacrificed.  Ultimately, the scientists will blame
> the software engineer for the situation.
>
> And interval arithmetic isn't just about accuracy.  Some algorithms are
> not guaranteed to work, or are impossible altogether, in point
> arithmetic, while they are guaranteed to work in interval arithmetic.
> The poster child for this is global minimization.

  While you're arguing about the goodness of interval arithmetic, I still
don't see the reason why it should be part of standard fortran.  People
have written interval arithmetic packages using derived types and operator
overloading.  As far as I can tell, the code ultimately generated would be
pretty much the same either way, particularly if the compiler is clever
with inlining.

          Andy