Stick these in the too-hard-for-now basket if you like.
On Sun, 19 Nov 2017, Michael Ferguson wrote:
... because there are integer types for every real type bit width (at
least at the moment).
On that note, if there becomes a need to support,
real(16)
bases are covered because there are integral types of size 16 bits.
With 512 bit vector units becoming more common, 32 of those suckers
crunching at a time is very attractive if somewhat needy of accuracy
analysis.
But what of
real(128)
SPARC does this in software, albiet at the assembler level. Even allowing
for Fujitsu's move to ARM, the SPARC architecture will persist. The old
PA-RISC had hardware support, and so does the new IBM POWER9. But should
there be support for real(128), does that also mean support for integral
types of that same size? Just curious if there is some policy on this.
That then also raises the question ...
What is the type of a floating literal?
In theory, it should be the size of the largest supported native type
because otherwise you end up in a mess. But will that break any programs
and end up with a different sort of mess. That said, even with 128bit
reals, you could always kill them off with a compiler flag.
And by the time we need to support
real(256)
we, or some younger generation probably, will be looking at Chapel's
replacement!
Regards - Damian
Pacific Engineering Systems International, 277-279 Broadway, Glebe NSW 2037
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