[squeak-dev] Re: [Vm-dev] [Fwd: Re: [Pharo-dev] Float hierarchy for 64-bit Spur]

Eliot Miranda eliot.miranda at gmail.com
Fri Nov 21 03:20:08 UTC 2014


Hi Ben,

On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 7:00 PM, Ben Coman <btc at openinworld.com> wrote:

>
> (sorry, I didn't notice the cross-post)


Thanks, Ben.

Eliot Miranda wrote:
>
>> Hi All,
>>
>>     64-bit Spur can usefully provide an immediate float, a 61-bit subset
>> of the ieee double precision float.
>>
>
> I wonder if class SmallDouble would be more intention revealing?
>
> In practice 61 bits will be "more than enough"(tm) for anyone. But I can
> envisage in a business environment environment software needing to comply
> with (sometimes irrelevant) feature checklists, with one of those likely
> being full 64 bit compliant IEEE Doubles.  Can we have such a class, to
> which 61 bit floats are auto-promoted as required?



Just as SmallInteger is seamless with the large integers, so SmallFloat is
seamless with boxed Float.  The SmallFloat representation is used where
ever possible, since it is faster both to decode (no memory fetch) and to
encode (no allocation).  But operations overflow into the boxed
representation if outside the SmallFloat range.


 The scheme steals bits from the mantissa to use for the immediate's 3-bit
>> tag pattern.  So values have the same precision as ieee doubles, but can
>> only represent the subset with exponents between 10^-38 and 10^38, the
>> single-precision range.  The issue here is how to organize the class
>> hierarchy.
>>
>
>
>> The approach that looks best to me is to modify class Float to be an
>> abstract class, and add two subclasses, BoxedFloat and SmallFloat, such
>> that existing boxed instances of Float outside the SmallFloat range will
>> become instances of BoxedFloat and instances within that range will be
>> replaced by references to the relevant SmallFloat.
>>
>>
> My first few pages of search results lead to a few references in
> conversation, but nothing that described what a boxed float is. Can
> someone explain?
>

Boxed datatypes are those where the data is held in a structure (e.g. an
object) and accessed throguh a pointer.  So most Smalltalk objects are
"boxed", for example, large integers, points, etc.  But some datatypes
(immediate SmallIntegers, and in Spur, the Characters, and in languages
like C, all basic numeric types) are represented as pure values.



> btw, http://www.ctan.org/pkg/float
> also mentioned boxed float, ruled float and plain­top float
> Anyone familiar with those?
>

Hmmm, never heard of ruled and plaintop floats.  I'd like to know too.


 With this approach ...
>>
>> - Float pi etc can still be used, even though they will answer instances
>> of SmallFloat.  But tests such as "self assert: result class == Float."
>> will need to be rewritten to e.g.  "self assert: result isFloat".
>>
>
> This is probably a good change anyway.
>
>
>> - BoxedFloat and SmallFloat will not be mentioned much at all since
>> floats print themselves literally, and so the fact that the classes have
>> changed won't be obvious.
>>
>> - the boxed Float primitives (receiver is a boxed float) live in
>> BoxedFloat and the immediate ones live in SmallFloat.  Making SmallFloat a
>> subclass of Float** poses problems for all the primitives that do a super
>> send to retry, since the boxed Float prims will be above the unboxed ones
>> and so the boxed ones would have to test for an immediate receiver.
>>
>
> ** do you mean the current Float, or after Float become abstract?


The former.  If Float stays unchanged and one tries to add SmallFloat as a
subclass then one hits the primitive failure problem.  If SmallFloat
doesn't inherit from BoxedFloat (when Float is abstract with BoxedFloat and
SmallFloat as subclasses), or if SmallFloat doesn't inherit from Float
(when LimitedPrecisionReal is abstract, and BoxedFloat and SmallFloat
inherit from it) then there's no such problem.

>
>
>
>>
>> An alternative, that VW took (because it has both Float and Double) is to
>> add a superclass, e.g. LimitedPrecisionReal, move most of the methods into
>> it, and keep Float as Float, and add SmallFloat as a subclass of
>> LimitedPrecisionReal.  Then while class-side methods such as pi would
>> likely be implemented in LimitedPrecisionReal class, sends to Float to
>> access them find them via inheritance.  An automatic reorganization which
>> moves only primitives out of LimitedPrecisionReal is easy to write.
>>
>>
> A Float is defined as a limited precision real [1] having several types
> of precision, so I like the first option.
>
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point
>
> cheers -ben
>

OK, thanks!

-- 
best,
Eliot
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