IEEE floating point format

[Michael Meissner]

In article <3591 at buengc.BU.EDU> bph at buengc.bu.edu (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
| Next question:  do C compilers (math libraries, I expect I should mean)
| on IEEE-FP-implementing machines generally limit doubles to normalized
| numbers, or do they blithely allow precision to waft away in the name
| of a slight increase in the number-range?
| 
| I expect the answer is "the compiler has nothing to do with it", so the
| next question would be, are there machines that don't permit the loss
| of precision without specific orders to do so?

The current versions of the Motorola 88000 trap to the kernel to
handle denormalized numbers.  Some early versions of the kernel just
stuff a zero where the denormalized number was.
--
Michael Meissner, Data General.
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