Reporting bugs: there is nothing to gain in frustrating reporters

[Toon Moene]

Vincent Lefevre wrote:

> Saying that the x86 processor is buggy is just completely silly.
> Only some gcc developers think so.

No, Kahan thinks so too (sorry, can't come up with a link just right 
now).  The original plan for x87 extended precision floating point was 
to have a small stack of 80-bit floats on the chip, and an interrupt to 
the OS if more registers were needed than the number extant on the chip. 
  The OS was then to provide the extra storage to "feign" the unlimited 
number of 80-bit "registers".

Unfortunately, somewhere in the design process of the 8087 things went 
wrong and the chip only handles 8 80-bit registers, not providing an 
interrupt (or any other support) to an OS to fake the "virtual" 80-bit 
registers.

Hence our problems.

-- 
Toon Moene - e-mail: toon@moene.indiv.nluug.nl - phone: +31 346 214290
Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG  Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
A maintainer of GNU Fortran 95: http://gcc.gnu.org/fortran/
Looking for a job: Work from home or at a customer site; HPC, (GNU) 
Fortran & C