LAPACK machine constants

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#1106

From: Keith Briggs rba8 7088
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 06:31

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The routine DLAMCH in LAPACK is supposed to return machine constants.
Here is the output when compiled and run with xlf on a IBM RISC/6000:

 eps      = 0.111022302462515654E-15  (machine eps)
 sfmin    = 0.22250738585072015E-307  (safe minimum)
 base     =  2.00000000000000000     
 eps*base = 0.222044604925031308E-15 
 t        =  53.0000000000000000      (digits)
 rnd      =  1.00000000000000000     
 emin     = -1021.00000000000000     
 rmin     = 0.22250738585072015E-307 
 emax     =  1024.00000000000000     
 rmax     = 0.17976931348623157E+309 

No problems!   However, after converting the type declarations to 
quadruple precision we get

 eps      =-0.1112536929253600691545116358666202E-307 
 sfmin    =-0.46566128730773925781250000000000000E-09 
 base     = -2147483648.0000000000000000000000000     
 eps*base = 0.2389154863368240330214629234492972E-298 
 t        =  34.000000000000000000000000000000000     
 rnd      = 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000E+00 
 emin     = 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000E+00 
 rmin     =-0.46566128730773925781250000000000000E-09 
 emax     =  1.0000000000000000000000000000000000     
 rmax     = -2147483648.0000000000000000000000000     


The weird (and unusable) results are caused by the IBM representation of
quadruple as two doubles.    In other words, DLAMCH has not been written
in a sufficiently portable way.

DOES ANYBODY KNOW THE CORRECT VALUES?

Keith.

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From: kbriggs@mundoe.maths.mu.OZ.AU (Keith Briggs rba8 7088)
Subject: LAPACK machine constants
Message-ID: <9302717.22929@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU>
Keywords: LAPACK, machine constants
Sender: news@cs.mu.OZ.AU
Organization: Computer Science, University of Melbourne, Australia
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 06:31:02 GMT
Lines: 37