doc/TestFloat-history.html

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<TITLE>Berkeley TestFloat History</TITLE>
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<H1>History of Berkeley TestFloat, to Release 3</H1>

<P>
John R. Hauser<BR>
2014 Dec 17<BR>
</P>


<P>
Releases of Berkeley TestFloat parallel those of Berkeley SoftFloat, on which
TestFloat is based.
Each TestFloat release necessarily incorporates all bug fixes from the
corresponding release of SoftFloat.
</P>


<H3>Release 3 (2014 December)</H3>

<UL>

<LI>
Complete rewrite, funded by the University of California, Berkeley, and
consequently having a different use license than earlier releases.
Visible changes included different names for testable functions and options.

<LI>
Reinstated separate programs for generating test cases
(<CODE>testfloat_ver</CODE>) and verifying test results
(<CODE>testfloat_gen</CODE>), as alternatives to the all-in-one
<CODE>testfloat</CODE> program (which remained supported).

<LI>
Added support for testing conversions between floating-point and unsigned
integers, both <NOBR>32-bit</NOBR> and <NOBR>64-bit</NOBR>.

<LI>
Added support for testing a fused multiply-add operation, for all testable
floating-point formats except <NOBR>80-bit</NOBR> double-extended-precision.

<LI>
Added support for testing a fifth rounding mode, <CODE>near_maxMag</CODE>
(round to nearest, with ties to maximum magnitude, away from zero).

<LI>
Added <CODE>timesoftfloat</CODE> (previously found in the Berkeley SoftFloat
package).

</UL>


<H3>Release 2c (2014 December)</H3>

<UL>

<LI>
Improved the wording for the legal restrictions on using TestFloat releases
<NOBR>through 2c</NOBR> (not applicable to <NOBR>Release 3</NOBR> or later).

</UL>


<P>
There was never a <NOBR>Release 2b</NOBR>.
</P>


<H3>Release 2a (1998 December)</H3>

<UL>

<LI>
Added support for testing conversions between floating-point and
<NOBR>64-bit</NOBR> signed integers.

<LI>
Improved the Makefiles.

</UL>


<H3>Release 2 (1997 June)</H3>

<UL>

<LI>
Integrated the generation of test cases and the checking of system results into
a single program.
(Before they were separate programs, normally joined by explicit command-line
pipes.)

<LI>
Improved the sequence of test cases.

<LI>
Added support for testing <NOBR>80-bit</NOBR> double-extended-precision and
<NOBR>128-bit</NOBR> quadruple precision.

<LI>
Made program output more readable, and added new command arguments.

<LI>
Reduced dependence on the quality of the standard <CODE>rand</CODE> function
for generating test cases.
(Previously naively expected <CODE>rand</CODE> to be able to generate good
random bits for the entire machine word width.)

<LI>
Created <CODE>testsoftfloat</CODE>, with its own simpler complete software
floating-point (&ldquo;slowfloat&rdquo;) for comparison purposes.

<LI>
Made some changes to the source file structure, including renaming
<CODE>environment.h</CODE> to <CODE>milieu.h</CODE> (to avoid confusion with
environment variables).

</UL>


<H3>Release 1a (1996 July)</H3>

<UL>

<LI>
Added the <CODE>-tininessbefore</CODE> and <CODE>-tininessafter</CODE> options
to control whether tininess should be detected before or after rounding.

</UL>


<H3>Release 1 (1996 July)</H3>

<UL>

<LI>
Original release, based on work done for the International Computer Science
Institute (ICSI) in Berkeley, California.

</UL>


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