From: mquinson <mquinson@48e7efb5-ca39-0410-a469-dd3cf9ba447f>
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 01:45:16 +0000 (+0000)
Subject: Blurb explaining why GRAS assume IEEE compliance without testing
X-Git-Tag: v3.3~5091
X-Git-Url: http://info.iut-bm.univ-fcomte.fr/pub/gitweb/simgrid.git/commitdiff_plain/9f480eb4f16a644b2de3baab7b62570dba8f7981

Blurb explaining why GRAS assume IEEE compliance without testing


git-svn-id: svn+ssh://scm.gforge.inria.fr/svn/simgrid/simgrid/trunk@255 48e7efb5-ca39-0410-a469-dd3cf9ba447f
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diff --git a/README.IEEE b/README.IEEE
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index 0000000000..b0141b0f49
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.IEEE
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+
+Snippet of http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/zsh/README.NONSTOP-FP:
+
+>>>>>
+Although IEEE 754 was not adopted until mid-1985, published drafts
+were available several years earlier.  The first implementation was
+the Intel 8087 on which the original IBM PC was based in 1981.  Since
+then, Intel IA-32 (formerly x86), i860, i960 and IA-64, Convex,
+HP/Compaq/DEC Alpha, HP PA-RISC, IBM Power and PowerPC, Motorola 68K
+and 88K, SGI MIPS, Sun SPARC, and most other CPUs (even on embedded
+systems) with floating-point point support adhere to at least part of
+the IEEE 754 specification.  All Cray supercomputers manufactured
+since the early 1990s have used IEEE 754 arithmetic.  The only
+non-IEEE-754 desktop (and larger) CPUs built since the mid-1980s have
+been the Compaq/DEC VAX (now obsolete), and the venerable IBM S/360
+architecture first introduced in 1964.  However, in 1998, IBM added
+the G5 processor boards on System/390 (Z series) with full IEEE 754
+support (including 128-bit quadruple precision in hardware), and
+GNU/Linux on that system uses only IEEE 754 arithmetic (even though
+the S/360 arithmetic is available, the GNU/Linux compilers and library
+don't support it).
+
+In addition to CPUs, the Java Virtual Machine specification mandates a
+subset of IEEE 754 arithmetic.
+<<<<<
+
+In conclusion, GRAS don't bother testing whether the architecture is IEEE
+compliant. It may change when I encounter such a beast, but I'm not sure it
+will ever happen.