Re: Cost of handling misaligned access

On Tue, 18 Feb 2025 02:55:33 +0000
mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1) wrote:

 
It takes Round Nearest Odd to perform Kahan-Babashuka Summation.
>

Are you aware of any widespread hardware that supplies Round to Nearest
with tie broken to Odd? Or of any widespread language that can request
such rounding mode?
Until both, implementing RNO on niche HW looks to me as wastage of both
HW resources and of space in your datasheet.

Instead, think of what you possibly forgot to do in order to help
software implementation IEEE binary128. That would be orders of
magnitude more useful in real world. And don't take me wrong, "orders of
magnitude more useful" is still small niche on the absolute scale of
usefulness.

That is:: comply with IEEE 754-2019
 

I'd say, comply with mandatory requirements of IEEE 754-2019.
For optional requirements, be selective. Prefer those that can be
accessed from widespread languages (including incoming editions of
language standards) over the rest.