(j3.2006) Question about IEEE assignment and derived types
Bill Long
longb
Fri Dec 14 18:15:37 EST 2007
Michael Ingrassia wrote:
>> Does that make the answer to all 5 questions "processor dependent"?
>>
>
> I guess you are referring to the sentence
> "La decision de signaler une exception d'operation
> invalide lors de la copie d'un non-nombre indicateur
> sans changement de format est laissee au
> realisateur comme option." ? (Sorry about omitting the diacriticals.)
>
> As I understand it, the implementor or realisateur might be interpreted
> as including a language standards body.
> That is, this is a slightly different notion from
> "processor dependent"-- if Fortran insisted you must always signal
> when copying a signaling NaN, that would be consistent with 754 but
> simultaneously inconsistent with leaving the answer as "processor dependent"
> in the Fortran standard.
>
Maybe true in theory, but not really practical. In practice, the
implementation is what is implemented in hardware. No one (I would
hope) is going to design a language where you have to perform a series
of software checks at each simple intrinsic assignment.
> But the hardware is still the hardware, so maybe we won't all agree on
> a definite answer.
That depends on the question. Dick asked if the IEEE rules *require*
that the assignment signal. That question does have a definite answer: No.
> My take is that copies based on intrinsic
> assignment ought to signal, and copies based on memcpy-style memory
> transferought ought not to signal, and I've lost track of which
> sort of copy we modeled allocate+source on.
>
Interesting take. In Fortran, I don't see how you would distinguish
among various copies. Having different conventions for different cases
would seem very confusing. Since the hardware types we support (64-bit
Opteron and Cray processors) do not signal on copies, my take is that a
copy of a signaling NaN would never signal. This convention also avoids
any questions of how to handle internally generated compiler temps.
Cheers,
Bill
>
> --Michael I.
>
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--
Bill Long longb at cray.com
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