Yes I was the one who questioned "scientific" motive, see the top of the thread! Still, on humane grounds, I claim we really, really need it in hardware. It doesn't matter for "scientific computing" it matters for us humans as long as we use decimal system as the only one we really "understand."

Any program that computes anything a lot has to use hardware based arithmetic to be really fast, still nobody expects that 0.10 cents he writes loses its meaning as soon as it is entered. It is absurd situation.