On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 11:11 AM, Fedor Sergeev <Fedor.Sergeev at sun.com> wrote: > On Wed, Dec 09, 2009 at 09:56:13PM +0100, Rainer Orth wrote: >> Fedor Sergeev <Fedor.Sergeev at sun.com> writes: >> >> > Nor I have seen any requests from customers flying around about that. >> >> That's at least a data point. >> >> > As decimal floating point support is not likely to be included into the >> > upcoming >> > C and C++ standards (at least not sought out as that right now) it is >> > "categorized" >> > for SunStudio compiler project as a useful gcc feature. >> >> It's obviously not only a GCC feature: from >> >> http://www.google.de/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&ved=0CAcQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ac.usc.es%2Farith19%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2F3670a225-spec-session-DFP-paper2.pdf&ei=aw0gS_q0OonE-Qadv62BDA&usg=AFQjCNH0q579_YEVFUOhmap8wfCgTapkpg >> > > Thanks for the paper! > >> it seems that at least HP cc on IA-64 and Intel C++ implement it as >> well. And Power6 even supports it in hardware, and IBM's xlc supports >> that, of course. Obviously other vendors see the need, and it would be >> good for Sun to at least follow, if it cannot lead the pack. > > Citing the above paper: > "Widespread usage of the IEEE 754-2008 decimal floating-point arithmetic has > yet to materialize, > but progress in the first several months after adoption of the new standard > is promising. > " > > does not sound like 'the pack' went far enough IMO. > > Would Sun support it in hardware that would be a huge bump up in priority.
It will soon become a problem if mozilla.org decides to require Decimal Floating Point support from the compiler to support new versions of Javascript. Either Sun Studio supports Decfloat or the Sun Studio compiler support in the mozilla.org code base will become unusable. Other software vendors (e.g. perl6) will likely follow suit and use Decimal Floating Point. Irek
