Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] XAP: a polemic
From: Steve Harris (S.W.Harris_AT_ecs.soton.ac.uk)
Date: Fri Dec 20 2002 - 13:59:31 EET
On Fri, Dec 20, 2002 at 09:20:26 +0000, Mike Rawes wrote:
> The only sound argument I have found for using integer fixed point over
> float can be summed up in two words:
>
> Denormal Number
>
> Although deft coding can alleviate it somewhat, I can only hope that
> with the Itanium, Opteron or whatever, this is no longer a problem!
You can tell the SSE unit(s) to remove them automatically and SSE is the
only (or main?) way of doing arithmetic on the Itanium IIRC. I haven't
read up on the Opteron.
But even in 387 denormal numbers are easy to stamp on if you find them.
- Steve
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Fri Dec 20 2002 - 14:31:00 EET