Subject: Re: [boost] Looking for some "real world" extendedprecision integer arithmetic tests
From: John Maddock (boost.regex_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-01-26 13:44:57
> That's a little alarming actually. If the integer is fixed length that
> means it may overflow and of course will also truncate in division since
> it is integer. Just like the compiler, we can't apply an optimization
> that changes the result the code may produce when overflow and truncation
> are considered as part of the normal behavior of the type. Sometimes
> arithmetic is written specifically with overflow and truncation in mind.
> Since any arithmetic operation may overflow this can really tie your
> hands. For numerical uses of fixed int we may assume that the programmer
> designed the code in such a way that overflow should never happen, but for
> behavioral simulation of hardware with fixed width integer units the
> correct overflow behavior is the whole point.
Very good point!
Looks like I'll have to write that other frontend then....
> By the way, I'm really excited about the expression template frontend. I
> like the elimination of unneeded copies and cutting down on the number of
> temporaries. I also think it is really cool that you are able to do the
> arithmetic transformations on the expression template trees. Are you
> using proto?
No. I started off using Proto, but compile times were so long it pretty
much melted down my laptop :-(
After some discussion on the list here I switched to a home-rolled
expression-template implementation that was designed to minimize the number
of templates instantiated (not to mention the amount of meta-programming
involved). Even so, compile times can still be quite long if you
instantiate lots of different expressions, but it is at least
manageable/usable now.
John.