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