On Thu, 13 May 2004 09:10:46 +0900, Lloyd Zusman wrote:

> 
> Well, the IBM mainframes from the 1960's had decimal arithmetic hardware
> built in.  They could do fixed point (integer), floating point, and
> decimal arithmetic via CPU instructions.
> 
> In fact, they even had several different internal formats for the numbers
> used in decimal arithmetic.
> 
> COBOL and PL/I compilers from back then could use this CPU capability
> directly for calculations.
> 
> Do more modern chunks of Big Iron still have built-in packed and zoned
> decimal arithmetic hardware?

You bet. In Big Iron world nothing ever dies.