Re: [potato] Floating point exception
On 23 Nov 1999, Eberhard Burr wrote:
> Imho, all packages should be compiled with -mieee. This will break no
> package that works on intel (since intel is ieee) and will only amount
> for minor slowdown. This will make an overall stable system to start
> off from and whichever package turns out to be too slow, must be
> compiled for the specific submodel it will run on, anyway.
I agree, yet disagree. While -mieee would definitely help alot of
packages, it is much more than just a minor slowdown in many cases. I've
had software take an unusually longer amount of time due to -mieee. Plus,
to add that much overhead to the execution of every programme is just not
needed in 95% of the cases.
As for compiling for the submodel, I'm assuming you mean for the machine
type. I wish we could (I have a 21164PC and would love to use that BMX
instruction for once), but we can't due to the large amount of 21066's and
21164's out there. As I found out accidentally with glibc (I miscompiled
it with alphapca56 as a target), things just won't run on other Alphas
with differing processors if compiled as such. I assumed that the kernels
were providing some of the instruction set functionality for processors
without them (albeit slower), but it does not.
C
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