'Big Integers' -re a Fall06 thread ADDLC

Having been 'away' from MI for some years - in catching up there seems to be a 
recognition in the i-series that exact calculations on large fixed point 
numbers are going to be a 'competitive' issue in the 'Server War'.
  
-- i note that packed and zoned decimal can now have 63 digits [for CPYNV, 
CVTCN, CVTNC, CVTEFN, EDIT, SETDPAT] .. no mention of add/subtract..
 
-- the POWER6 overview presented recently noted that this 'technology' includes 
native 'decimal arithmatic'  .. the 'puff' piece said that it is a response to 
federal requirements that 3 x 5 = will never be 14.999999999.....

--"Orcas" [will be Microsoft Visual Studio 3.0] 1/2007 preview includes a 'Big 
Integer' class in '.NET Framework 3.0' which is illustrated in April 07 MSDN 
mag with a nice exact integer display output of 1000!  (~4.02 x 10**2605)

ADDLC dates from S/38 days and is a 'legit' adder of integers up to 2**2048 
(10**616) but although there is a SUBLC we never have had multiply or divide.

Many years ago i worked on IBM hardware (character based -variable lenght 
fields) which didn't have multiply/divide and as a machine level programmer 
developed (as did others) subroutines to multiply and divide fields of any 
length.  Multiplication (repetitive addition) was relatively straightforward .. 
division (repetitive subtraction) always struck me as odd.

==> has anyone tried out 63 digit packed decimal support ??

bruce