Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2004 12:40:04 -0500 From: Jay Sern Liew <liew@jaysern.org> To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: increased machine precision for FreeBSD apps? Message-ID: <1089567603.746.45.camel@athlon>
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Hello guys, This is probably more of an organizational issue than an architectural one. In the event of running applications with heavy floating point arithmetic (e.g. scientific computation apps for one, encryption algorithms, compression, .. etc ), would it be a good idea to decrease rounding errors by increasing the data type size? e.g. When a programmer declares a floating point variable, the compiler/assembler allocates twice(or a multiple of) the space needed, hence increasing the precision(and better approximation?). I realize this is really just a trade off with execution speed and/or efficiency, perhaps unsuitable for real time calculations, but better for those who don't mind waiting a little for better results, with less the hardware. As a small peek into the future if this thing doesn't sound like herecy, we _could_ implement this so that it is transparent to the programmer(doing it at the compiler/assembler level), none of the ports would need to be rewritten, and could potentially benefit from the increased machine precision(where desired). Just an idea for FreeBSD to knock on the scientific community's door. (If 2.5 mil web hosts trusts FreeBSD for reliability, why can't the more mathematically inclined community?) I realize that the real scientists(read: well funded, by the big wigs) would have at their disposal computers that won't be needing this(although they could benefit from this), this would be great for home-brewed calculations, maybe students(computer scientists, mathematicians, chemists, biologists, meteorologists, .. ), or just any DIY-ist. This isn't really a new idea, perhaps comparable to x86-64; sure x86-32's may not have the 64-bit physical address space, but they can still have the 64-bit(or more) precision, right? I apologize if this suggestion has already been brought up before. (I'm not only the kind who speaks, I'd aid in the development of this). -- Jay Sern Liew <liew@jaysern.org> liew.jaysern.org
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