I highlighted that comment more as an example of the poor bastards trying to get some help from the compiler guys than for its accurate portrayal of '87 performance. Myself, I never expect the FPU to produce accurate data, but I'd sure like it to be repeatable... But on the other hand, the reason optimisations are optional is that there are edge cases where it breaks shit :-)
On 15 February 2011 19:40, Carl Jokl <[email protected]> wrote: > Is the x87 the most accurate general purpose floating point unit on > the market? I honestly don't know either way because I don't know > about the relative strengths of different processor FPUs. Perhaps not > important but it would help me interpret the line "wanting accuracy > out of the most accurate general purpose FPU on the market!" i.e. > whether it is to be meant sarcastically because the x87 isn't very > accurate or as an irony because there is difficulty in achieving > accuracy from GCC on x87 in spite of the hardware being most > accurate. > > Part of the confusion is that the x86 family of chips is generally > considered the old school legacy platform and other processors > differentiate themselves on "being x amount more efficient than legacy > x86 architecture" however the x86 can still have advantages sometimes. > I wonder about the accuracy given that Java has to do some of the > floating point mathematics in software because the hardware is not > accurate enough for the floating point functionality to achieve IEEE > floating point compliance with hardware. (Except sometimes within > certain ranges i.e. sin +/- ∏/4 radians ?) > > I don't doubt that if I need to have it explained it may no longer be > funny but I might learn something along the way. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Java Posse" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
