From: Gregg N 

Geo wrote:
>
> But ok I understand the speed issues for some of this, that still doesn't
> explain why there isn't an option to do real math instead of floating point
> math.
>
> Geo.
>
>
>

In most computer languages, the arithmetic operations provided are those
that can be implemented in a single machine instruction directly by the
underlying hardware. For example, C and C++ actually don't even state the
number of bits in an integer; only a minimum. The size of an integer is
whatever is "natural" for the underlying machine (e.g., 16, 32,
36 bits, etc.).

Most modern CPUs have at least 32-bit integer instructions, which allows
numbers up to 2^32-1, or about 4 billion, so some languages (e.g. Java)
state that an integer is 32 bits.

Gregg

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