Intel® Decimal Floating-Point Math Library

Product Overview

Software implementation of the IEEE 754R Decimal Floating-Point Arithmetic specification aimed at financial applications, especially in cases where legal requirements make it necessary to use decimal, and not binary floating-point arithmetic (as computation performed with binary floating-point operations may introduce small, but unacceptable errors).

Features and Benefits

Ensures compliance with the upcoming revision of the IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic. The library implements the functions defined for decimal floating-point arithmetic operations in the 'DRAFT Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic P754', which is a revision of the IEEE Standard 754-1985 for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic. There is no IEEE publication of the revised standard draft at the present time, but on-line resources such as Wikipedia (search for 'IEEE 754r') offer ample information and links to relevant sites. The Intel(R) Decimal Floating-Point Math Library supports primarily the binary encoding format for decimal floating-point values, but the decimal encoding format is supported too in the library, by means of conversion functions(*) between the two encoding formats.

Release 1.0 of the library contained in this package implements all the operations mandated by the 'DRAFT Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic P754'. For operations involving integer operands or results, the library supports signed and unsigned 8-, 16-, 32-, and 64-bit integers.

The library package contains: (1) a copy of the end user license agreement; (2) a README FILE; (3) a LIBRARY subdirectory with all the source files necessary to build the library, and a README file which specifies how to build the library in Linux**, HP-UX**, Windows***, and other operating systems; (4) a TESTS subdirectory with source and input files necessary to build and run a reduced set of tests for the library and a README file which specifies how to build and run these tests; (5) an EXAMPLES subdirectory containing eight examples of calls to library functions with various combinations of build options.

Technical Requirements

This generic package will run on any platform in Linux, Windows, HP-UX, Solaris, OSX.

Primary Technology Contact

Marius Cornea is a principal engineer in Intel's Software & Solutions Group. He holds a master's degree in Electrical Engineering and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN. Since joining Intel in 1994, his work is related to scientific computation, design and development of numerical algorithms, floating-point emulation, exception handling, and new floating-point instruction definition and analysis. His e-mail is marius.cornea@intel.com.

Comments (8)

March 18, 2009 1:48 PM PDT

tryrtyyy

Total Points:
5
Registered User

Sory Can't download library.... BAd

March 19, 2009 9:14 PM PDT

Marius

Hi, the download works for me. Please try again - thank you

May 24, 2009 5:43 PM PDT

Byeongheon Cho

I want to test this library.

June 1, 2009 12:31 PM PDT

Marius Cornea

Hello Byeongheon,
I was out of the office for the past two weeks, so I only saw your message today. Were you able to download the library?
Thanks,
Marius Cornea

June 15, 2009 1:53 PM PDT

dweeberlyloom

Total Points:
6,630
Status Points:
6,130

Brown Belt

Sorry I know these may be questions that can't be "officially" answered, but I'm curious and would be happy if you could give hints at unofficial answers :-)

Does Intel plan to fully support the IEEE 754-2008 in future hardware?

Any idea as to when this might happen?

Thanks

June 15, 2009 3:55 PM PDT

Marius Cornea

Hi,
Actually, in my personal opinion there will not be a complete hardware implementation of the IEEE Standard 754-2008 any time soon (i.e. for many years to come). The reason is that there are many features in the standard - take correctly rounded transcendentals for example - that are extremely costly to implement in hardware, while very good software solutions exist, or can be found. There is no good justification to have a hardware-only implementation.
Marius Cornea

June 16, 2009 9:27 AM PDT

dweeberlyloom

Total Points:
6,630
Status Points:
6,130

Brown Belt

Weren't similar things said in 85. I mean if anyone (like a scientist or engineer) need that kind of fp performance they could buy a 8087 ;-)

I would think that decimal and long double (128 bit) would benefit considerably from direct hardware support. Still it would not surprise me if a full hardware implementation would take a couple of years (assuming the changes have been anticipated and are already 'in the pipe').

June 16, 2009 11:02 AM PDT

Marius Cornea

The Intel® 8087 implemented everything that was important in the old IEEE standard 754 (even before it became a standard), but left certain operations to software. This will most likely be the case with the new standard too and any future hardware implementations of it (or rather of a subset; as the standard states, it is acceptable to implement it in a combination of HW and SW - no one can realistically expect a hardware-only implementation)