Testing

[Hal Murray]

tenterline at gmail.com said:
> I come from a scientific background, where we compare results somewhat as
> analog values. If the test result is off the expected by 1000%, that's bad.
> If it's off 1%, better. If the error is .00001%, probably within  achievable
> accuracy. 

There is a difference between running the same experiment again to get new 
data and running new software on old data.

Are the specs and implementation for IEEE floating point tight enough so that 
I should get the exact same result if I run a test on a different CPU chip?  
Or is there room for things like holding extra bits in temporary results so 
the bottom bits might be different due to round off or such?


-- 
These are my opinions.  I hate spam.