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Has the Decades-Old Floating Point Error Problem Been Solved? (insidehpc.com)
overheardinpdx quotes HPCwire:
Wednesday a company called Bounded Floating Point announced a "breakthrough patent in processor design, which allows representation of real numbers accurate to the last digit for the first time in computer history. This bounded floating point system is a game changer for the computing industry, particularly for computationally intensive functions such as weather prediction, GPS, and autonomous vehicles," said the inventor, Alan Jorgensen, PhD. "By using this system, it is possible to guarantee that the display of floating point values is accurate to plus or minus one in the last digit..."
The innovative bounded floating point system computes two limits (or bounds) that contain the represented real number. These bounds are carried through successive calculations. When the calculated result is no longer sufficiently accurate the result is so marked, as are all further calculations made using that value. It is fail-safe and performs in real time.
Jorgensen is described as a cyber bounty hunter and part time instructor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas teaching computer science to non-computer science students. In November he received US Patent number 9,817,662 -- "Apparatus for calculating and retaining a bound on error during floating point operations and methods thereof." But in a followup, HPCwire reports: After this article was published, a number of readers raised concerns about the originality of Jorgensen's techniques, noting the existence of prior art going back years. Specifically, there is precedent in John Gustafson's work on unums and interval arithmetic both at Sun and in his 2015 book, The End of Error, which was published 19 months before Jorgensen's patent application was filed. We regret the omission of this information from the original article.
The innovative bounded floating point system computes two limits (or bounds) that contain the represented real number. These bounds are carried through successive calculations. When the calculated result is no longer sufficiently accurate the result is so marked, as are all further calculations made using that value. It is fail-safe and performs in real time.
Jorgensen is described as a cyber bounty hunter and part time instructor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas teaching computer science to non-computer science students. In November he received US Patent number 9,817,662 -- "Apparatus for calculating and retaining a bound on error during floating point operations and methods thereof." But in a followup, HPCwire reports: After this article was published, a number of readers raised concerns about the originality of Jorgensen's techniques, noting the existence of prior art going back years. Specifically, there is precedent in John Gustafson's work on unums and interval arithmetic both at Sun and in his 2015 book, The End of Error, which was published 19 months before Jorgensen's patent application was filed. We regret the omission of this information from the original article.
the "bounds" also have the same issue, it's making the problem smaller but not eliminating it
Balls and intervals have been here for quite some time, though. Not sure that this is merely "twice the work", though.
Ezekiel 23:20
The perversions of the US patent system are truly astounding.
Also sounds very much like they re-invented Interval Arithmetic, which was discovered originally around 1950 and has been available in numeric packages for a long time. And, to top it off, the title is lying: Interval Arithmetic does not give you an accurate representation. It just makes sure you always know the maximum error.
Pathetic.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This is also known as Interval Arithmetic, vintage ca. 1950 and available in many numerics packages. Just putting known algorithms in hardware does not make them anything meriting a patent.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Yeah, I don't see how this isn't just a hardware implementation of interval arithmetic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_arithmetic, which is a topic basic enough that I teach aspects of it as a secondary topic to my Calc I students. It is possible there's something deeper here that we're missing but if so, it doesn't stand out.
But the differences are meaningless. Substantial, yes; but since differences smaller than the resolution of the universe can lead to meaningful divergence in the simulation, that precision has little value.