The Great Debate @ARITH23: John Gustafson and William Kahan

dancefan · 4.2K views · 2016-07-30 · 1:34:42

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Overview

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.

On Hacker News

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

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2017–2023

Topics

Computer architecture & CPUs Math & theory (other)

What people said

celias · 2017-03 · Recommendation
The Great Debate @ARITH23: John Gustafson and William Kahan [VIDEO] Audio quality is not great but there are links to slides from Gustafson and Kahan
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porkbrain · 2023-04 · Reference
A related discussion about number types: The Great Debate @ARITH23: John Gustafson and William Kahan [VIDEO] Kahan points out disadvantages of interval maths.
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SideQuark · 2023-01 · Reference
Original posits are variable width, making them nearly useless for high performance parallel computations. Later versions don't add anything of use for low precision neural networks, and lack of hardware support anywhere make them too slow for anything other than toying around. See also [LINK] and [VIDEO]
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Sources

Video by dancefan, played through YouTube.

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