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| <TITLE>Berkeley SoftFloat History</TITLE> |
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| <H1>History of Berkeley SoftFloat, to Release 3e</H1> |
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| <P> |
| John R. Hauser<BR> |
| 2018 January 20<BR> |
| </P> |
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| <H3>Release 3e (2018 January)</H3> |
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| <UL> |
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| <LI> |
| Changed the default numeric code for optional rounding mode <CODE>odd</CODE> |
| (round to odd, also known as <EM>jamming</EM>) from 5 to 6. |
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| <LI> |
| Modified the behavior of rounding mode <CODE>odd</CODE> when rounding to an |
| integer value (either conversion to an integer format or a |
| ‘<CODE>roundToInt</CODE>’ function). |
| Previously, for those cases only, rounding mode <CODE>odd</CODE> acted the same |
| as rounding to minimum magnitude. |
| Now all operations are rounded consistently. |
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| <LI> |
| Fixed some errors in the specialization code modeling Intel x86 floating-point, |
| specifically the integers returned on invalid operations and the propagation of |
| NaN payloads in a few rare cases. |
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| <LI> |
| Added specialization code modeling ARM floating-point, conforming to VFPv2 or |
| later. |
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| <LI> |
| Added an example target for ARM processors. |
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| <LI> |
| Fixed a minor bug whereby function <CODE>f16_to_ui64</CODE> might return a |
| different integer than expected in the case that the floating-point operand is |
| negative. |
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| <LI> |
| Added example target-specific optimization for GCC, employing GCC instrinsics |
| and support for <NOBR>128-bit</NOBR> integer arithmetic. |
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| <LI> |
| Made other minor improvements. |
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| </UL> |
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| <H3>Release 3d (2017 August)</H3> |
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| <UL> |
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| <LI> |
| Fixed bugs in the square root functions for <NOBR>64-bit</NOBR> |
| double-precision, <NOBR>80-bit</NOBR> double-extended-precision, and |
| <NOBR>128-bit</NOBR> quadruple-precision. |
| For <NOBR>64-bit</NOBR> double-precision (<CODE>f64_sqrt</CODE>), the result |
| could sometimes be off by <NOBR>1 unit</NOBR> in the last place |
| (<NOBR>1 ulp</NOBR>) from what it should be. |
| For the larger formats, the square root could be wrong in a large portion of |
| the less-significant bits. |
| (A bug in <CODE>f128_sqrt</CODE> was first reported by Alexei Sibidanov.) |
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| </UL> |
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| <H3>Release 3c (2017 February)</H3> |
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| <UL> |
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| <LI> |
| Added optional rounding mode <CODE>odd</CODE> (round to odd, also known as |
| <EM>jamming</EM>). |
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| <LI> |
| Corrected the documentation concerning non-canonical representations in |
| <NOBR>80-bit</NOBR> double-extended-precision. |
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| </UL> |
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| <H3>Release 3b (2016 July)</H3> |
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| <UL> |
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| <LI> |
| Implemented the common <NOBR>16-bit</NOBR> “half-precision” |
| floating-point format (<CODE>float16_t</CODE>). |
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| <LI> |
| Made the integer values returned on invalid conversions to integer formats |
| be determined by the port-specific specialization instead of being the same for |
| all ports. |
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| <LI> |
| Added preprocessor macro <CODE>THREAD_LOCAL</CODE> to allow the floating-point |
| state (modes and exception flags) to be made per-thread. |
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| <LI> |
| Modified the provided Makefiles to allow some options to be overridden from the |
| <CODE>make</CODE> command. |
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| <LI> |
| Made other minor improvements. |
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| </UL> |
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| <H3>Release 3a (2015 October)</H3> |
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| <UL> |
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| <LI> |
| Replaced the license text supplied by the University of California, Berkeley. |
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| </UL> |
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| <H3>Release 3 (2015 February)</H3> |
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| <UL> |
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| <LI> |
| Complete rewrite, funded by the University of California, Berkeley, and |
| consequently having a different use license than earlier releases. |
| Major changes included renaming most types and functions, upgrading some |
| algorithms, restructuring the source files, and making SoftFloat into a true |
| library. |
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| <LI> |
| Added functions to convert between floating-point and unsigned integers, both |
| <NOBR>32-bit</NOBR> and <NOBR>64-bit</NOBR> (<CODE>uint32_t</CODE> and |
| <CODE>uint64_t</CODE>). |
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| <LI> |
| Added functions for fused multiply-add, for all supported floating-point |
| formats except <NOBR>80-bit</NOBR> double-extended-precision. |
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| <LI> |
| Added support for a fifth rounding mode, <CODE>near_maxMag</CODE> (round to |
| nearest, with ties to maximum magnitude, away from zero). |
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| <LI> |
| Dropped the <CODE>timesoftfloat</CODE> program (now part of the Berkeley |
| TestFloat package). |
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| </UL> |
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| <H3>Release 2c (2015 January)</H3> |
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| <UL> |
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| <LI> |
| Fixed mistakes affecting some <NOBR>64-bit</NOBR> processors. |
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| <LI> |
| Further improved the documentation and the wording for the legal restrictions |
| on using SoftFloat releases <NOBR>through 2c</NOBR> (not applicable to |
| <NOBR>Release 3</NOBR> or later). |
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| </UL> |
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| <H3>Release 2b (2002 May)</H3> |
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| <UL> |
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| <LI> |
| Made minor updates to the documentation, including improved wording for the |
| legal restrictions on using SoftFloat. |
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| </UL> |
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| <H3>Release 2a (1998 December)</H3> |
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| <UL> |
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| <LI> |
| Added functions to convert between <NOBR>64-bit</NOBR> integers |
| (<CODE>int64</CODE>) and all supported floating-point formats. |
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| <LI> |
| Fixed a bug in all <NOBR>64-bit</NOBR>-version square root functions except |
| <CODE>float32_sqrt</CODE> that caused the result sometimes to be off by |
| <NOBR>1 unit</NOBR> in the last place (<NOBR>1 ulp</NOBR>) from what it should |
| be. |
| (Bug discovered by Paul Donahue.) |
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| <LI> |
| Improved the Makefiles. |
| </UL> |
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| <H3>Release 2 (1997 June)</H3> |
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| <UL> |
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| <LI> |
| Created the <NOBR>64-bit</NOBR> (<CODE>bits64</CODE>) version, adding the |
| <CODE>floatx80</CODE> and <CODE>float128</CODE> formats. |
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| <LI> |
| Changed the source directory structure, splitting the sources into a |
| <CODE>bits32</CODE> and a <CODE>bits64</CODE> version. |
| Renamed <CODE>environment.h</CODE> to <CODE>milieu.h</CODE> to avoid confusion |
| with environment variables. |
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| <LI> |
| Fixed a small error that caused <CODE>float64_round_to_int</CODE> often to |
| round the wrong way in nearest/even mode when the operand was between |
| 2<SUP>20</SUP> and 2<SUP>21</SUP> and halfway between two integers. |
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| </UL> |
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| <H3>Release 1a (1996 July)</H3> |
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| <UL> |
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| <LI> |
| Corrected a mistake that caused borderline underflow cases not to raise the |
| underflow flag when they should have. |
| (Problem reported by Doug Priest.) |
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| <LI> |
| Added the <CODE>float_detect_tininess</CODE> variable to control whether |
| tininess is detected before or after rounding. |
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| </UL> |
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| <H3>Release 1 (1996 July)</H3> |
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| <UL> |
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| <LI> |
| Original release, based on work done for the International Computer Science |
| Institute (ICSI) in Berkeley, California. |
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| </UL> |
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| </BODY> |
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