From: broehl@sunee.waterloo.edu (Bernie Roehl) Subject: Re: TECH: My standard is better than your standard. Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1992 15:02:06 GMT Message-ID: Organization: University of Waterloo In article <1992Jul26.075023.9336@u.washington.edu> s047@sand.sics.bu.oz.au (Jeremy Lee) writes: >Why a world time scale? If I want a process over here going at 1 >nanaosecond per second, and another over there going at 2 nanoseconds >per second, does that mean I can't? The speed at which your process runs is up to you (and to the hardware :-) ) However, if we agree that some sort of timestamping is desireable, we have to agree on a "tick" length unit for any given world. Different worlds can, of course, each have their own time scale. >What if I go straight from a world in which I had scaled >myself up to galaxy size, then I zap over to another world that it at, >as you say, the size of single cell. I've got to be able to see what I >am doing before I re-scale myself >Answer: Use 128 bit numbers, and "actual size" scaling. The trouble with 128 bit numbers is the overhead involved in processing them (and transmitting them over networks). For a VW to be useful, it has to have reasonable performance. -- Bernie Roehl, University of Waterloo Electrical Engineering Dept Mail: broehl@sunee.waterloo.edu OR broehl@sunee.UWaterloo.ca BangPath: uunet!watmath!sunee!broehl Voice: (519) 885-1211 x 2607 [work]