# The speed of light is an integer. Why should we care?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-speed-of-light-is-an-integer-why-should-we-care/40108>\
**Category:** Internals & Design\
**Tags:** integer-overflow\
**Created:** [May 25, 2020, 5:16am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-speed-of-light-is-an-integer-why-should-we-care/40108 "2020-05-25T05:16:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 7

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**Author:** ![lungben](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/lungben/32/12314_2.png) [@lungben](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/lungben)\
**Post date:** [May 25, 2020, 7:53am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-speed-of-light-is-an-integer-why-should-we-care/40108/7 "2020-05-25T07:53:22Z")

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It is an unfortunate trade-off between performance and safety.  
However, I think that the decision to default to fast integers in Julia is correct, most of the time there is no overflow risk.  
However, it would be great if future CPUs would have hardware-support for zero-cost overflow safe integers.

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