@rygorous@mastodon.gamedev.place
Post #2797254
2026-04-14 21:55 UTC
@Doomed_Daniel@mastodon.gamedev.place @zeux@mastodon.gamedev.place @lisyarus@mastodon.gamedev.place See also langs and environments that always treat subnormals as 0 and so forth.
It's just words on a page. What do you think the enforcement mechanism is?
The reality of the matter is that anything written in IEEE-754 is exactly as important as its users think it is. Historically speaking, very good track record on the basic stuff (correctly rounded fundamental operations, RN default, certain math lib fns being available), beyond that, very touch and go.
Replies (1)
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@rygorous@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-04-14 21:58
@Doomed_Daniel@mastodon.gamedev.place @zeux@mastodon.gamedev.place @lisyarus@mastodon.gamedev.place For most of the 80s and 90s we had a bunch of very different evaluation strategies, at least three: 1. basic RISCs with just +,-,*,/,sqrt and either only float or float+double but no extended format (and often limited support for traps etc.) 2. RISCs with FMAs (usually of the "almost everything reduces to FMA variety", e.g. the RS/6000, PPC and descendants) 3. M68k and x87 with internal extended precision and extra exponent range.