Hello Folks — Just an update on this (rather old) message (below). Hardware support for quadruple-precision floating-point (128-bit) will be available on the Power9 processor next year: http://forwardthinking.pcmag.com/show-reports/347472-amd-ibm-and-intel-point-the-way-to-new-processors
If any of you find this functionality useful, or even generally support the idea, feel free to drop me a line. I will forward it to the team at IBM that fought for this to be included. Thanks. Cheers Gaurav ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GAURAV KHANNA, (508) 910 6605, http://gravity.phy.umassd.edu Professor, Physics Department, College of Engineering Assoc. Director, Center for Scientific Computing & Visualization Research Graduate Program Director, Engg & Appl. Sci. Ph.D. Program University of Massachusetts Dartmouth "Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steven Wright > On Jul 3, 2012, at 4:06 PM, Gaurav Khanna <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Dear Colleague -- > > I hope you are doing well. I'm requesting some feedback here on the potential > need for high-precision numerics in your research work in the next few years. > By high-precision, I'm referring to higher than double floating-point > precision (64-bit or ~14 decimal digits) i.e. what is traditionally known as > quadruple-precision (128-bit or ~30 decimal digits) and perhaps even higher. > Today, one can easily emulate such a high level of precision through software > libraries, but these often perform an order-of-magnitude slower than full > hardware-supported, double-precision computations. > > I know that in some subareas of our research community high-precision > numerics are going to be necessary and are already in use in some projects. > But there may be other areas as well. Long duration simulations or > computations utilizing higher-order methods (pseudo-spectral etc.) are likely > to benefit from high-precision numerics. There may also be some benefits in > the context of studying some borderline ill-conditioned problems; and not > necessarily only cases where very high accuracy is desirable. Please take a > somewhat farsighted view and consider this question in the context of your > own research. > > The main reason I'm inquiring is that I'm engaged with IBM R&D on this issue, > and they are considering developing a processor that has hardware-level > support for quadruple floating-point precision. Currently, they are > developing a POWER based server with an FPGA-accelerator that is > tightly-coupled to the main CPU. The FPGA could have the option of serving as > a high-precision numerics accelerator at the hardware level. In fact, such a > system is already operating in a number of IBM labs. > > At this stage, it is crucial to provide IBM with some feedback on the > "market" for such a product, so that it can actually advance past the > research development stage. Therefore, I'm requesting some feedback from you > on this matter. Do you see yourself using quadruple-precision numerics in the > next few years? If so, could you briefly explain why? Would you be interested > in such a server / HPC? Do you know others who could be interested? Please > feel free to forward this note to others. > > Thank you for your time. > > Best wishes, > Gaurav > > ----------------------------------------------- > > GAURAV KHANNA > UMass Dartmouth, Physics > (508) 910 6605 > http://gravity.phy.umassd.edu/ <http://gravity.phy.umassd.edu/> > > "Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steven Wright
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