Re: Softfloat on ARM?
On 2007-02-12 15:51 +0100, David Fokkema wrote:
> Hi group,
>
> Regarding floating point operations in ImageMagick / NetPBM there were
> suggestions to try out the EABI port. Right now, that seems a bit
> painful. However, on the Debian EABI port page in the wiki it says that
> the current way of working (oldabi) is about ten times slower than a
> program compiled with softfloat, if I understand correctly. I tried
> simply to use an -msoft-float compiler switch. That issued a 'missing
> -lfloat' error and that seems to be a very old library removed from
> debian. IEEE softfloat is software released a long time ago which only
> creates an object file and doesn't have an ARM template???
>
> I'm really confused.
>
> Is it possible for me to just compile ImageMagick / NetPBM with some
> sort of softfloat support which doesn't generate hard illegal
> instruction faults and how could I do that?
In a word: No.
You can't (easily) mix soft-float compiled binaries with non-soft-float
compiled binaries on existing arm. (that's one major reason why
EABI/armel will imporve people's lives - this sort of thing becomes
possible).
The problem is that you can't link soft-float and hard-float binaries.
To built it with soft-float requires all the libraries to also be
soft-float so that implies a lot of rebuilding and static-linking.
Fixing netpbm to resize without doing FP (on arm) might not be a huge
job - I have no idea. It would certainly be appreciated by other
people using arm boxes in the way you are - soft-float is still very
slow in comparison to integer algorithms.
FP is often used quite gratuitously by developers unfamiliar with the
idea that it might not be avilable.
Wookey
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