Re: IEEEP1788
> On 28 Apr 2015, at 01:13, Richard Fateman <fateman@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> 2. Arbitrary precision floats and many operations on them
> are supported by existing programming packages such as MPFR,
> or any number of computer algebra systems.
> In fact these provide much more: truly arbitrary precision floats, directed roundings,
> elementary function evaluation, input and output.
Quite.
> I expect that a system such as MPFR could be set up to include
> a component that provides exact/complete dot product. Whether MPFR (etc) could be
> hooked up to special hardware to do complete arithmetic when useful would not be out of the
> question. So it appears to be a superset capability, and not necessarily slower.
> And it would not make a hash of the supporting programming language.
With my supercomputer chip-designer hat on, I am doubtful about specialised hardware for any arithmetical operation.
We are now moving into the era of “internet of things” where low power consumption, and minimal chip area are king. Even for supercomputers (which are really just specially-selected stock hardware, and are cross-subsidised by the volume market) — the so-called exascale machines — we are running into power consumption issues; an exaflop machine could be built today, provided you connect it to a Fukushima-sized power plant, and can afford the electricity bills.
So the current motto is “keep it small, keep it power efficient, and place the data as close to the compute nodes as possible”.
Oh, and what you need for exascale is a low-cost, low-power, low-latency, low-overhead comms fabric. With that, and good parallel algorithm design you should be able to implement any of the complete arithmetic operations in software more efficiently, and on stock hardware.
Dave Lester