Quiz submission record for quiz3-2-1 at Wed Jul  7 10:49:32 2004:

Your Answer for Question 1:
Someone might just access an instruction in a computer 
to do an important task by treating it as if it were
an int or floating value with the same number of bits, and change that. 

The way to change this is to have different amount
of bits allocated for different things.

The trade off will be that the computer would lose the 
regularity and run slower.

Your Answer for Question 2:
subnormal is the number smaller than the smallest possible value that can be represented.  
We care about these, because
this will allow gradual underflow.

Your Answer for Question 3:
Because by having .5 instead of 1.0, we could avoid going into another bit (that would represent 2^0), and just stay below the decimal point. (In the old days, this might have affected the speed quite a lot).

Your Answer for Question 4:
Strongest argument to stick to the standard is that a lot
of researches had been done on those system.  So already 
a lot of other systems use that standard, which makes the
new co-processors more friendly than having completely new standard.

The argument against sticking to the standard is that
one can have more efficiency by getting out of the standard.  Especially when I would want to design a processor for a specific purpose, I would rather go against the standard.


Your unique submission ID is quiz3-2-1-cs61c-eb-1089222572-2595.