Re: [ppc patch] soft-float

[Stefan Reinauer <stepan@openbios.org>]

* Yoshinori K. Okuji <okuji@enbug.org> [041007 11:18]:
> On Wednesday 06 October 2004 12:18, Tomas Ebenlendr wrote:
> > This can be done with integers, if we define some 'human big number
> > format', or so. But I think that FP/FPE is more generic problem,
> > because of modularity of grub.

In case of file sizes, the number format is just bytes.. 

(bytes>>10) is kbytes
etc... It is easy to shift through and print the remainder..

 
> But, IMO, floating point is not required for boot loaders. I admit that 
> floating point is convenient, but I don't see many cases where floating 
> point is useful in the context of boot loaders.

If a module wants to use fp, it should take care of checking for an fpu
and enabling it autonomously. There's cases where operating
systems started crashing because they assumed that the fpu is untouched 
at a certain point of startup. Sure, it's the OSes fault to some regard.

But we don't start enabling MMU and paging either. Even though some
applications might use it. At some point it is the responsibility of an
OS or standalone application to handle hardware extensions. And this
point should not be pushed higher for no real reason.

Stefan