>>>>> "Stephane" == Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@pasteur.fr> writes:
Stephane> On Monday 25 January 1999, at 23 h 39, the keyboard of
Stephane> John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> wrote:
>> So, my question is, why does Alpha suddenly require math
>> emulation when it didn't before? Isn't FP one of the Alpha's
>> strongest areas?
Stephane> It is *not* FP emulation and it has nothing to do with
Stephane> i387 emulation on the PC.
That is what i thought, too. The Alpha doesn't seem to have `weird'
numbers such as NaN (0/0, or log(-1)), +Inf (1/0) or -Inf(log(0)),
which are defined for IEEE arithmetic. Indeed, compiling -mieee will
generate code to deal with these constants.
In c, you could say
#include <huge_val.h>
float min = -HUGE_VAL;
for (i=0; i<N; i++ ) {
if (a[i]>min) min=a[i];
}
This normally needs to be compiled -mieee on Alpha. I suspect that
the new kernel config parameter relaxes this condition.
---david