Has someone wrote code that uses densely packed decimals?
From what I understand, it is more efficient than BCD.
Thanks.
"densely" ?
Ray did some work with packed decimals on his FPU site
http://www.ray.masmcode.com/BCDtut.html (http://www.ray.masmcode.com/BCDtut.html)
also - the FPU can access packed BCD
http://www.ray.masmcode.com/tutorial/fpuchap6.htm (http://www.ray.masmcode.com/tutorial/fpuchap6.htm)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Densely_packed_decimal
i don't see much advantage there
if you need to do that - convert to binary integer - calculate - convert back to decimal
you can fit 9 full decimal digits in a dword :t
When densely packing digits was implemented, 'core' memory was expensive. Thus, it was economically beneficial to unpack/calculate/pack.
Today, with memory being rather cheap,
QuoteI don't see much advantage there