Re: [parisc-linux] glibc 2.3.1 - It's alive! - patches

[Carlos O'Donell <carlos@baldric.uwo.ca>]

> > We need it or else we have to fall back on completely software emulated
> > quad arithmetic. Though the framework for replacing all those function
> > calls is available.
> 
> As Willy mentioned, no PA processors actually implement quad arithmetic
> at this time although it is part of the PA 2.0 architecture.  So, we
> have to use software emulation and there is no point at this time
> in adding the quad arithmetic ops to pa.md definition.  The simplest
> approach is to use the libcall interface already implemented for hpux
> (see pa/long_double.h).

Ah yes, correct, I had forgotten that it was never implemented in
silica. So you suggest we not implement this in libc but rather in gcc,
may I ask why?

> While GMP is a useful package, it doesn't emulate IEEE 754 arithmetic.
> That's what we need here.  There's a floating point emulator in gcc/real.c
> but I think the HP library would be superior.

I'm pretty sure that MPFR library in GMP can emulate IEEE 754 arithmetic, 
though I could be wrong.

c.