Computers double precision storage

Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) introduced a sophisticated minicomputer, the VAX 11/780, in the mid- to late-1970s. At prices of 300 k USD (and up), machines could be acquired that were as fast as 1960s multi-million dollar mainframes. Double precision meant 64-bit words, and multiple external disk drives could be added to provide hundreds of MB of storage. DEC was not the only producer of minicomputers, and before long, with different vendors and models, their use for computational chemistry became fairly widespread. 

Input-output devices planned for the prototype include a cathode-ray-tube display unit and an operator s console typewriter. Machine subroutines or separate special-purpose hardware to handle the decimal-to-binary conversion upon input and binary-to-decimal at output are discussed with the subroutines getting the nod for the IAS-type machine on the basis that it is intended for problems with a large ratio of compute to input-output time. The second of these historic reports introduces the programming concepts of flow diagrams, storage tables, coding, subroutines, and loaders, and illustrates their application with examples such as decimal-binary and binary-decimal conversion, double-precision arithmetic, and sorting problems. 

The creation of matrix N and vector b could lead to a large consumption of computing resources (storage and time) and to a significant loss of information (in data) if double precision is not used. 

An important thing for physics is that a DNA double helix s shape does not really depend very much on the sequence of monomers. (This is because the pairs are mutually complementary and are hidden inside the double helix.) In this sense, DNA is like a piece of paper or a computer memory — a media suitable for recording any message. It is for precisely this reason that the DNA texts can be altered. Otherwise, the result of evolution would be not the best suited organisms, but merely DNA molecules with lower energy. In contrast, the tertiary structures of proteins strongly depend on their primary structures this allows different proteins to carry out so many different functions, and does not allow proteins to serve as inheritable information storage. 

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