[jmull]

In the patent he contrasts his "apparatus" with interval arithmetic. He says IA greatly increase computation (while his method doesn't) and requires twice as much storage (while his method doesn't.

To me, it looks like a specific mechanism for encoding the bounds and scale of error into a floating point representation, along with a pipeline for processing operations on operands of this form (presumably efficiently). So to me it looks like a specific variant of IA.

It looks like the purpose is to be implemented as an alternative to conventional floating point libraries and CPU modules. E.g., Intel might license this and add a floating point module based on this + instructions to access it to a future CPU. (Well, even if it's great and all is as advertised, and proves to be generally useful, I'm not sure it would jump right into the CPU. It would probably have to grow more organically first, but that's another discussion.)

I mean, I have no idea if this does all of what it says or if it does, whether that would prove to be generally useful enough to make it out of niche cases.

But it's interesting.