my crude benchmark results

[Ranjit Mathew]

Bryce McKinlay wrote:
> 
> We should also figure out if things like __builtin_sqrt(), ie the 
> inlines enabled by --fast-math in the front end, are good enough to 
> replace the Math.* functions. If so we could enable the inlines without 
> enabling the other "unsafe" back-end features that are implied by it. 
> The math headers on x86 linux just replace these math calls with their 
> __builtin equivilants, so it would certainly work there, but whether it 
> is safe to do this on all platforms I don't know.

It would to good to peruse an entertaining read written
by "the grand old man of floating point" William Kahan
on "How Java's Floating Point Hurts Everyone Everywhere":

  http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/JAVAhurt.pdf

His homepage in general has a lot of very interesting
reads on floating point:

  http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/

My 2p.

Ranjit.

-- 
Ranjit Mathew          Email: rmathew AT gmail DOT com

Bangalore, INDIA.      Web: http://ranjitmathew.tripod.com/