Hardware?
P1788,
A long-time member of our community who asked not to be identified, either by name or by company, wrote to me and has given permission to circulate this version:
On Kahan's website you'll find one presentation that makes this point: HW vendors focus, for good or bad, on performance benchmarks.
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/ieee754status/baleful.pdf
IMHO, what P1788 should be doing is this:
* Develop a spec about a compliant HW/SW system - leave mandatory HW details out.
* Develop interval arithmetic applications that a broad spectrum of users want to run, and run fast - where is that killer application (interval spreadsheet, cell phone or tablet app?)
* Get those interval arithmetic applications incorporated into benchmarks that are used to evaluate processor performance.
Until P1788 folks do all of the above, I suspect imagine that processor vendors will comply with the interval standard via SW - and then, only if P1788 allows them to do so.
Example: 754 decimal arithmetic does not require HW support.
Remember the golden rule: those with the gold rule. Which processor firms have the gold? Intel, AMD, IBM, HP, ARM, Oracle. P1788 folks need to make these firms want to comply with P1788, and the way to do that is with applications and benchmarks. If P1788 mandates HW support, then these golden boys will respond by saying - someone else is welcome to satisfy this 1% of the marketplace who needs compliance, we'll focus on selling to the remaining 99%.
Has P1788 thought of creating a C/C++/JVM (pick your language) library that complies with the P1788?
Dr. George F. Corliss
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Marquette University
P.O. Box 1881
1515 W. Wisconsin Ave
Milwaukee WI 53201-1881 USA
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www.eng.mu.edu/corlissg