Re: SIGFPE and -mieee
On Tue, 2003-06-17 at 13:04, Helge Kreutzmann wrote:
> Hello,
> On Tue, Jun 17, 2003 at 11:10:01AM -0400, George France wrote:
> > Everything built for alpha should use -mieee. It is not need on most other
> > architrectures, but it is almost a requirement for the alpha architecture.
>
> Sure, since all other (popular) architectures implement the IEEE
> standard.
>
> > This has been a subject of lengthy discussion on several mailing list.
>
> Well, which ones? I can't remember such discussions with the outcome
> you mention on either debian alpha nor redhat-axp.
>
> One of the reasons for the speed of alpha is the ability to calculate
> fast, eliminating often unnecessary checks. So why should we do away
> this advantage by re-inserting those checks on a broad basis again
> when compiling software?
I agree. For some software, it will be necessary to do this, but to
intentionally hobble everything by default will hurt the performance of
code which I rely on to be fast, such as ATLAS.
If someone runs into SIGFPE, that person should file a bug against the
package mentioning the -mieee fix described above. IMHO, this is not a
good thing to force upon all of Debian on alpha.
Zeen,
--
-Adam P.
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