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Date:      Fri, 16 Jul 1999 09:45:35 +0100 (BST)
From:      Doug Rabson <dfr@nlsystems.com>
To:        John Polstra <jdp@polstra.com>
Cc:        alpha@freebsd.org, simokawa@sat.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Subject:   Re: alpha/12623: strtod(3) FPE on alphaev56
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.10.9907160944230.58023-100000@salmon.nlsystems.com>
In-Reply-To: <XFMail.990715215415.jdp@polstra.com>

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On Thu, 15 Jul 1999, John Polstra wrote:

> Doug Rabson wrote:
> > On Tue, 13 Jul 1999, John Polstra wrote:
> > 
> >> Yes, or the equivalent "-mieee".  In my opinion, all of the libraries
> >> (if not the whole world) should be compiled that way.  In fact, this
> >> option should be the default.  Users who wanted a little extra speed
> >> and who knew what they are doing could turn it off.
> > 
> > I agree (at least as far as the libraries go). Setting it as default would
> > be easy but there are performance implications. On the other hand, the
> > only applications whose performance is affected are ones using floating
> > point..
> 
> Yes, I think "correct by default" would be more in keeping with the
> FreeBSD tradition than "fast but possibly wrong by default".  So I
> still think -mieee should be used for everything.
> 
> My only real concern about making it the compiler default is that it
> causes us to deviate from standard egcs a little bit more.  But the
> deviation would be confined to "egcs/config/alpha/freebsd.h", which is
> probably OK.  I think we should add a "-mno-ieee" option to disable
> it, too.  That's not hard.

I agree. As long as there is a -mno-ieee option for those programs which
need to squeeze the last drop of performance then this is the right thing
to do.

--
Doug Rabson				Mail:  dfr@nlsystems.com
Nonlinear Systems Ltd.			Phone: +44 181 442 9037




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