On Tue, Sep 5, 2023 at 10:44 PM Toon Moene <t...@moene.org> wrote: > > This is going to be an interesting discussion. > > In the upcoming GNU Tools Cauldron meeting the representation of complex > numbers in GCC will be discussed from the following "starting point": > > "Complex numbers are used to describe many physical phenomenons and are > of prime importance in data signal processing. Nevertheless, despite > being part of the C and C++ standards since C99, they are still not > completely first class citizens in mainstream compilers." > > *This* is from the Fortran 66 Standard (http://moene.org/~toon/f66.pdf - > a photocopy of the 1966 Standard): > > - - - - - > > Chapter 4. Data Types: > ... > 4.2.4 Complex Type. > > A complex datum is processor approximation to the value of a complex number. > ... > > - - - - - > > I can recall people complaining about the way complex arithmetic was > handled by compilers since the late 70s. > > This is even obvious in weather forecasting software I have to deal with > *today* (all written in Fortran). Some models use complex variables to > encode the "spectral" (wave-decomposed) computations in parts where that > is useful - others just "degrade" those algorithms to explicitly use reals.
Lack of applications / benchmarks using complex numbers is also a problem for any work on this. Richard. > Kind regards, > > -- > Toon Moene - e-mail: t...@moene.org - phone: +31 346 214290 > Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
