ieee denormal on ia64?

Anton Shterenlikht mexas at bristol.ac.uk
Fri Feb 25 09:33:48 UTC 2011


Can somebody please confirm that denormal
are not available on ia64, see below.

Thanks
Anton

----- Forwarded message from FX <fxcoudert at gmail.com> -----

> What about denormal?

The FreeBSD manpage for fpsetmask() at http://tinyurl.com/64oo7zh says:

>      #define FP_X_DNML	     0x02    /* denormal */


so it is, in principle, available. However, looking at the FreeBSD 8 source tree, I see for sys/ia64/include/ieeefp.h:

#define	FP_X_INV	IA64_FPSR_TRAP_VD /* invalid operation exception */
#define	FP_X_DZ		IA64_FPSR_TRAP_ZD /* divide-by-zero exception */
#define	FP_X_OFL	IA64_FPSR_TRAP_OD /* overflow exception */
#define	FP_X_UFL	IA64_FPSR_TRAP_UD /* underflow exception */
#define	FP_X_IMP	IA64_FPSR_TRAP_ID /* imprecise(inexact) exception */

which means underflow is not a supported exception, while it is for amd64:

#define FP_X_DNML	0x02	/* denormal */

and also for i386:

#define FP_X_DNML	0x02	/* denormal */


So, in this case, it's actually an OS issue!

Cheers,
FX

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
Anton Shterenlikht
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Bristol University
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