Hawk Software

Hardware floating point is taken for granted by today’s programmers, but it has not always been so.  I remember programming 80286/386 CPUs that did not have hardware floating point hardware, and back then the accepted alternative for many programs, especially games, was fixed point math.  But fixed point math is HARD.  It is hard for many programmers to understand, then it is hard to convert an entire code base from floating to fixed.  So I have been looking at other ways to speed up software floating point code, hopefully enough so that many projects will not need to be converted to fixed point to run at a decent speed.

I am not going into a description of floating and fixed point math right now, so if you are not familiar with them you can read this floating point article and/or this fixed point article.  For this post, I will begin by highlighting a few of the reasons software floating point math, specifically IEEE 754 conforming floating point, is so slow in software. Read the rest of this entry »

OK, I admit it; I became addicted to Tom’s Hardware Forums! In my defense, I love helping people, and I love a challenge.  And Tom’s also has those cool and addicting medals and points. . .Good, but very bad!

So, now that my forum status is officially Addict, I will try to back off a little and spend more time on programing.  I think I have some interesting things in store for you. Read the rest of this entry »

After a long hiatus, work has begun again on my HawkVoice library, and there will be a change in focus and direction. But before explaining the changes, I need to quickly review how HawkVoice began in the first place, because I never planned to become an ‘expert’ in open source speech compression.  It began all about networking with HawkNL. Read the rest of this entry »

If you are interested in Windows news at all you have seen the presentation on Windows 8 (Win8). I was shocked, not by the new touch screen based user interface (UI), nor by the fact that it will be the default UI on the desktop. Go desktop touch screens! (I admit it, I have tried to activate a menu or application by touching my desktop screen after spending too many hours on my Android tablet) Read the rest of this entry »

I have been sting back quietly taking all this  so far, but no more!  Whether you are for the free open source WebM (VP8) video codec the the free (for now) H.264 video codec, you SHOULD be worried about the outcome.  An extended war could delay the advancement of video on the web, just like to extended war over Blu-ray and HD-DVD has left the Blu-ray camp with and empty victory; Disney is finally boosting its Blu-ray sales with combo packs which include a DVD “for portable use”. Read the rest of this entry »