c/8395: gcc 2.95.4 and 3.2 generate wrong code for double on intel

[Bruce Allen]

Marco, Toon is completely correct.  

If you read the materials that we keep asking you to study, you will learn
that there is a discrete set of "IEEE754 floating point numbers".  
Somewhat less than 2^32 of them for single precision, somewhat less than
2^64 of them for double precision.

As a consequence, since this is a finite set, and the real numbers are not
even a countable set, most real numbers are not IEEE754 floats.  Only a
finite subset are.  Examples:
 Pi      ==> not an IEEE754 float
 1.2     ==> not an IEEE754 float
 6       ==> IS an IEEE754 float
 1.25    ==> IS an IEEE754 float
 1+2^-20 ==> IS an IEEE754 float
Also, a mathematical operation between two IEEE754 floats may or may not
yield another IEEE754 float.  For example 1.25*1.25 does yield another
IEEE754 float, but (1+2^-20)*(1+2^-20) does yield an IEEE754 float if
working in double precision, but not in single precision.

When the result of a mathematical operation (say, assigning 1.2 to an
IEEE754 variable) does not yield an IEEE754 float, the standard specifies
a couple of different possible user-selectable ways to round the number
(assign it an IEEE754 value).  There is round-to-nearest (pick closest
IEEE754 float) and round-to-zero.

Also, languages like C do not specify an order for operations to take
place  in expressions.  So two identical lines of C might yield different
results with different compilers.

Like you, I am a University Professor (Physics).  I teach IEEE754 in my
course on mathematical methods where we spend a few weeks on numerical
methods.  Here are a few exercises for you to do:

-- what is the largest integer that is an IEEE754 single float?  double
   float? Write this as a sum of powers of 2.
-- what is the largest integer N such that both N and N+1 are IEEE754
   single floats?
-- what is the smallest positive number that is still a normalized IEEE754
   single float.  smallest positive number that is an IEEE754 single float
   but is not normalized?
Please read some of the literature (it is not a complicated subject) and
do the exercises.

Bruce Allen

On Sat, 2 Nov 2002, Toon Moene wrote:

> Marco Bernardo wrote:
> 
> > 1. Some colleagues of mine tried to compile and run the same program
> >    on other platforms, in particular on a sparc machine, and the output
> >    turned out to be
> >        -6 -1.2 5 0 -6 0
> >    Why is that? Isn't the IEEE 754 standard adopted on sparc machines?
> 
> Yes.  For further explanations, see the "Further Readings" item on our 
> home page:
> 
> http://gcc.gnu.org -> "Further Readings" (left column) ->
> 
> 	Differences among IEEE 754 implementations (by Doug Priest)
> 
> -- 
> Toon Moene - mailto:toon@moene.indiv.nluug.nl - phoneto: +31 346 214290
> Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG  Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
> Maintainer, GNU Fortran 77: http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/g77_news.html
> Join GNU Fortran 95: http://g95.sourceforge.net/ (under construction)
> 
>