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Article #6523

Re: Precision of floating point multiply

#6523
From: Nick Maclaren
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2003 20:27
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In article <Rh0eb.632709$Ho3.121617@sccrnsc03>,
Glen Herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
>
>Well, you would get SDR 2,2 and LE 2,A in that case.  The compiler does have
>to keep track of which registers have single and which have double values.
>Leaving low bits from previous calculations in would seem a bad idea.
>Though according to other posts it may be legal in Fortran.

It certainly is legal, provided they are from an appropriate calculation,
but that is not what is going on here.

The specification of IBM floating-point register operations is precisely
that the unused low-order bits are ignored.  Those bits are therefore
NOT being left in the value; they are being left OUTSIDE the value.
That is why it is quite safe for single precision multiply to create
them and to leave them where they are.

Similarly, conversion from single to double precision has to clear those
bits, whether the operand being converted has been created by multiply
or anything else.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.
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From: nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran,comp.arch,bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Precision of floating point multiply
Date: 29 Sep 2003 20:27:46 GMT
Organization: University of Cambridge, England
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