[LLVMdev] [RFC] Add a simple soft-float class

[Duncan P. N. Exon Smith]

> On 2014 Jun 18, at 10:09, Owen Anderson <resistor at mac.com> wrote:
> 
> +1
> 
> I strongly question the wisdom of trying to invent our own floating point representation.  IEEE 754 is, honestly, pretty damn well designed.  Unless we all go spend a few years studying numerical analysis, we’re not going to design something here that is better, and are likely to get caught in numerical traps that using IEEE floating point would have protected us from.
> 
> That said, I’m sympathetic to the desire for a good, convenient soft-float library.  I think the correct solution is to *make APFloat not suck*, rather than inventing something new.
> 
> —Owen

I'm certainly not suggesting this would be better in general than IEEE 754.

But I think it's suitable for the sorts of places we currently use
hard-floats.  I guess you (and Philip) are saying there are dragons here?

Although "making APFloat not suck" might be ideal, we don't have the code
written for that.