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Even worse, a patent for a "processor design, which allows representation of real numbers accurate to the last digit" is obviously nonsense. Pi (=3.141...) is a real number where there is no "last digit".
>The inventor patented a process that addresses floating point errors by computing “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.” That does seem useful but it's a bit akin to saying that you've solved…
You can trap. ...but then again, existing arithmetic traps are not uniformly enabled by default.
I'm not sure how much it increases computation time, but software for exactly this is freely available, see for instance Arb: https://github.com/fredrik-johansson/arb
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? I'm genuinely curious why you blame him for patenting his work.
Because it would be nice if someone, somewhere would do the right thing rather than whatever stupid nonsense benefits them personally the most.
Patent in case anyone is curious https://encrypted.google.com/patents/US9817662
And immediately patents it... so no one else can use it. EDIT: and for some other methods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unum_%28number_format%29 , particularly the latest one being the Posit method: http://superfri.org/superfri/article/download/137/232 EDIT2: of course other people can license it, but the other way to bring a new floating point to the scene would be through the same process that happened with IEEE 7…
I understand the downside, but how else would he ever get paid for this?
There's a reason Linux and GNU utilities are so massively widely used, and overall they've probably provided billions in economic value. They do that freely, for any human to use, and in fact that's part of their main value proposition. Both were born out of the legal nightmare that was UNIX at the time.
How should he get paid for this? In a very-ideal world, people and corporations that used his idea and had spare capital would voluntarily give him donations. In a better-than-this world, governments (or some other entity) would pay bounties to inventories out of a pool of tax money, based on both perceived usefulness of the invention and how widespread its use came to be.
And immediately patents it... so no one else can use it. EDIT: and for some other methods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unum_%28number_format%29 , particularly the latest one being the Posit method: http://superfri.org/superfri/article/download/137/232 EDIT2: of course other people can license it, but the other way to bring a new floating point to the scene would be through the same process that happened with IEEE 7…
I mean, it's unfortunate, but can you blame him?