Computer arithmetic - a programmer's perspective
188. R. P. Brent,
Computer arithmetic - a programmer's perspective
(keynote address),
Proc. 14th IEEE Symposium on Computer Arithmetic
(I. Koren and P. Kornerup, eds.),
IEEE CS Press, 1999, 2.
Transparencies:
dvi (12K),
pdf (124K),
ps (120K).
Abstract
Advances in computer hardware often have little impact until they become
accessible to programmers using high-level languages.
For example, the IEEE floating-point arithmetic standard provides
various rounding modes and exceptions, but it is difficult or impossible
to take advantage of these from most high-level languages, so the full
capabilities of IEEE-compatible hardware are seldom used.
When they are used by writing in machine or assembly language,
there is a high cost in program development and testing time,
lack of portability, and difficulty of software maintenance.
In this talk we discuss several areas in which computer hardware,
especially arithmetic hardware, can or should significantly influence
programming language design. These include:
- vector units,
- floating-point exception handling,
- floating-point rounding modes,
- high/extended precision registers and arithmetic.
Relevant application areas include interval arithmetic,
high-precision integer arithmetic for computer algebra and
cryptography,
and testing of hardware by comparison with software
simulations.
Comments
For related papers, see
[17,
24,
42,
43,
69,
193].
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