Re: Internal representation of double variables - 3.4.6 vs 4.1.0

[Terry Frankcombe <terry at chem dot gu dot se>]

On Fri, 2007-03-09 at 10:54 -0800, Brian Dessent wrote:
> Terry Frankcombe wrote:
> 
> > My understanding of -ffloat-store is that it only works when there's
> > actually a variable involved.  Is that right?
> 
> Right, it's not a guaranteed fix.
> 
> > (I'm used to working with Compaq and Intel Fortran compilers, where you
> > can set flags that say, effectively, "Use a standard, well-defined and
> > portable floating point arithmetic model irrespective of what the CPU's
> > trying to do.")
> 
> I'd say you pretty much get that with -mfpmath=sse.  The only reason
> anyone should ever use 387 is if binary compatibility with ancient
> pre-SSE pentiums/K6s is required.  Otherwise, it's an ancient and creaky
> fp architecture that would be best obsoleted (which they finally did in
> x86_64 AFAIK.)
> 
> Brian

For the world at large:

Is there any sensible reason that these options seem to buried in
processor-specific sections?  Surely the hardware floating point model
varies on more than just the x86 family and friends.  Why isn't there a
simple, global option to get a portable floating point model?
(Particularly now that gfortran is becoming more popular!)  Tying the
floating point model to a particular hardware feature/instruction set
(SSE) seems absolutely absurd to me.  It should be abstracted to a much
higher level.

Terry