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Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

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Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#41

Post by meuk »

ktpsns wrote: post #17

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".

I think he describes a procedure which guarantees that the last digit of the representation is exact. So that we (in decimal) can have 3.14 as a representation for pi, but never 3.13 or 3.15. But this is hardly 'solving floating point errors' and hardly novel.

The whole technique smells a bit fishy to me, but it might be genuine (in any way, the article seems more like marketing since the technical merit is not immediately obvious, and the difference with existing techniques not immediately clear).

Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#42

Post by kbenson »

Tenobrus wrote: post #29
api wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the downside, but how else would he ever get paid for this?

Under a different system that doesn't incentivize holding back global progress for small amounts of individual enrichment. 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 t…

> Under a different system that doesn't incentivize holding back global progress for small amounts of individual enrichment.

Patents don't hold back global progress any more than capitalism keeps people in poverty. If we went back a few hundred years and impose alternatives, would we be better off today? I doubt it.

The whole point of the patent system is to foster innovation, and free exchange of ideas. Without the patent system, people are incentivized to keep their inventions secret, and hide how they work, but patents require publishing the details. Some companies don't patent some things just so they can keep it secret.

The problem with the patent system is not the concept of patents, but what they've been allowed to apply to and how long the terms have increased.

Him patenting the idea meanshe has control over his options. It also prevents another entity, such as Intel or AMD discovering it and patenting it. If he wants, he can make it free to use for non-profiting or open source entities.

Edit: The capitalism / poverty comparison is meant to infer communism, as the alternative to a competition and financially motivated system. I don't think it's contentious to say capitalism ended up being the better system for getting people's standard of living raised, even is communism sounds good on paper. I don't think the relation to the patent system in comparison to some ideal sounding solution where people get some money somehow for giving their ideas to the world immediately is all that strained.

Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#43

Post by dfox »

Tenobrus wrote: post #29
api wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the downside, but how else would he ever get paid for this?

Under a different system that doesn't incentivize holding back global progress for small amounts of individual enrichment. 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 t…

Motivation for patent system is that it incentivizes inventors to publish they inventions in exchange for time-limited exclusivity on it, which is certainly better for progress than inventions that are unpublished trade secrets.

Issue with patent system is that it's real implementations are gameable, not with the idea itself.

Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#44

Post by Chaebixi »

speps wrote: post #2

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…

> There are plenty of people who wouldn't touch anything patented at all, sometimes even with a patent clause.

Then that's their loss. This seems like the ideal scenario for patent protections: small inventor developing a genuinely novel and useful invention that big, rich companies would otherwise shamelessly copy.

Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#45

Post by dekhn »

bringtheaction wrote: post #25
turc1656 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? I'm genuinely curious why you blame him for patenting his work.

Because the whole patent system is broken and everyone who partakes in it shares blame.

This is an absolutist position that permits no subtlety. But the patent system is a subtle incentivization which seeks to balance a number of forces (in particular, it incentivizes people to invent new things that they can profit from, while also avoiding trade secrets).

Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#46

Post by gvb »

cwmma wrote: post #16

Patent in case anyone is curious https://encrypted.google.com/patents/US9817662

Thanks for the link.

Looking at the claims, it looks like he's patented an augmented floating point unit (hardware) that does bounded arithmetic. The #1 claim is "A processing device [with a] FPU [and a] bounded floating point unit (BFPU)." All the following claims are "The processing device as recited in claim 1" (e.g. CPU+FPU+BFPU) with subsequent changes.

Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#47

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

dmm wrote: post #31
speps wrote: post #2

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…

At least patents expire someday.

So far. That statement used to be true of U.S. copyrights as well.

Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#49

Post by wolfgke »

dekhn wrote: post #6
speps wrote: post #2

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…

Patents don't necessarily mean nobody else can use it. For example, he could license the technology which means people have to pay to use it.

And what about programmers that care about free as freedom?
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