Basic HTML version of Foils prepared July 6 99

Foil 20 Java Grande Forum Floating Point Proposals

From Overview of Java Grande Forum JavaOne Birds of a Feather on Java Grande San Francisco -- June 16 99. by Geoffrey C. Fox


1 Design Goals/Requirements:
  • Good Performance on most processors
  • High performance supported
  • exact reproducibility supported
  • access to IEEE floating point features
2 We propose three modes of floating point execution
3 strictfp: Reproducible results as in current default
4 new default: Exploit natural hardware (extended exponent in Intel and fused multiply add FMA)
5 associatefp: Allow conventional compiler optimizations
6 Sun will consider some version of this starting with ability to use FMA
7 Generic Types, Operator Overloading and lightweight classes are also serious possibilities for thoughtful additions to Java language
8 Working with internal Sun staff on drafting modest proposals (as of March 11 meeting in Palo Alto)

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