On Wed, 5 Mar 2008, David Schultz wrote:
On Wed, Mar 05, 2008, Colin Percival wrote:
Bruce Evans wrote:
Modified files:
sys/i386/include _types.h
Log:
Change float_t and double_t to long double on i386.
Doesn't this have a rather severe performance impact on any code which
uses double_t?
Yes, if the code is compiled with -msse2. Otherwise, doubles get
fed to the i387 anyway.
Not even then. Doubles get fed to the i387 anyway in many cases (in
most cases I think). One exception is double to int conversion --
this uses SSE2 so as to avoid a slow mode switch (cvtsd2si always
rounds towards 0, while the default i386 mode rounds to nearest;
otherwise it would be the SSE code that is slower). Adds of doubles
normally go through the i387 (I've never seen an exception to this).
Technically Bruce's change isn't wrong without changing the
default precision, it's just rather pointless.
It isn't pointless, since the default is only the default. Changing
it using fpsetprec() has been supported in FreeBSD since 1993, and
before that it required 2 lines of asm. My change gives double_t
a chance of working right when the default is changed at runtime.
While such changes are not really supported, there is no need to
force them to be broken.
(Why tell programs
to store variables in a wider format if you're just going to
evaluate them in a narrower format anyway?)
After fpsetprec(FP_PE):
(1) the evaluation is not in a narrower format.
(2) I use double_t when I hope that the variable will stay in a register
and not cost a store
(3) when I store to a double, it is obviously narrower on i386, and the
compiler is tricked into doing the store correctly without using
something like STRICT_ASSIGN(). STRICT_ASSIGN() uses a volatile
hack which makes it potentially slower than an ordinary assignment,
and currently doesn't support this mode.
Irrespective of fpsetprec(FP_PE):
(1)' - (3)' for float_t vs float precision. float_t just needs to be
double for this. Using long double costs little and is technically
half required even with the default precision, since the range is
almost that of a long double. (The different range affects at least
overflow exceptions.)
(3)'' I can write code that is more portable and don't need to pessimize
all uses of STRICT_ALIGN() on doubles by supporting full long double
precision everywhere. Code that supports extra precision (either
by a runtime switch or a change in the default) can use double_t and
code that doesn't care or doesn't understand the complications can
keep using plain double.
So I guess I agree
that if we're going to go down this path, we ought to just bite
the bullet and change npx.h and contrib/gcc/config/i386/freebsd.h
to use 64-bit precision by default on i386.
I hope to do that in a non-revolutionary way.
Bruce
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