Re: [gfortran] I/O of large integer and real kinds, round 2

[Jerry DeLisle <jvdelisle at verizon dot net>]

Steve Kargl wrote:

> When you say that you "could really use real(10) and real(16)",
> is either type already available on the Mac?  I wasn't not
> thinking about doing a software implementation of either type.
>
> On at least FreeBSD-amd64, gfortran will be built with real(10).
> I believe that the standards requires implementations for all
> intrinsic procedures of real(10) if gfortran provides this kind.
> (My copy of the draft standard is too far way to find the exact
> requirement.)
Not necessarily thinking of the Mac platform.  That right now was a 
matter of convenience. In fact we are also running on P4 machines and 
other platforms.  Next generation hardware will bring a new set of 
issues, capabilities.

It would not make sense to me to implement higher precision and not use 
hardware support when available, so the configure scripts need to make a 
determination of the platform capabilities and build accordingly.  I am 
assuming that real 10 would be IEEE extended 80 bit or similar.

I was thinking along the lines of the wrapper functions also.  When 
support for real(16) in hardware comes along, which it will, then the 
implementation can be modeled after (edited from) the wrappers for real(10).

Does mpfr recognize when it has hardware available and use it?  That 
would be really nice.

Jerry