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Message-ID: <alpine.LRH.2.02.2002231724010.23908@key0.esi.com.au>
Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2020 18:08:25 +1100 (AEDT)
From: Damian McGuckin <damianm@....com.au>
To: musl@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Min and Max of 2 Floating Point numbers


Curiosity only (i.e. not a MUSL question). But it is somewhat relevant to 
MUSL which I note at the end of this email.

Besides the latest Intels, PowerPC, ARMs, I am just curious which of the 
CPU architectures implement this function directly at the assembler level, 
i.e. and hence avoiding a branch, i.e.

 	double f ....
 	double g ....
and
 	double fgmax = f > g ? f : g;

The word 'implement' is a bit loose. I am not talking about the definition 
in Annex F of the C standard.

The IEEE 754-2019 standard has changed the definition so as to properly 
propogate NaNs. The 1.2.0 version I just downloaded still follows the
2008 definition.

ARM is smart enough to have 2 instructions, one (FMAX) which did propogate 
NaNs and one (FMAXNM) which follows the 2008 standard. That said, I do not 
personally compile on an ARM so I have no idea how you ask for FMAX or how 
you ask for FMAXNM?

The PowerPC ISA 3.0 instruction properly propogates NaNs so it agrees with 
the new standard.

The Intel instruction follows neither standard as far as I can tell. An
interesting condition.

Please tell me if I am wrong.

MUSL relevance: I believe that even in 1.2.0, MUSL's own fmax/fmin libc
routines violate the IEEE 754-2019 standard which came out recently. Well, 
it was approved June, published July, released November. I think that is 
recent.

Regards - Damian

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