registers. AMD had to include x87 for 32-bit compatibility, but there was no way they were going to beef up its number of registers for 64-bit mode when they had the better SSE2 alternative.
making x87 better could be done fairly easily: just get rid of the stack-based register set ;)
HPC folk that only needed single precision FP could have been avoiding x87 on x86 architectures since 1999, which isn't that long ago, in my opinion.
are there really so many SP HPC apps?
However, HPC folk with dual precision FP codes running on x86 couldn't avoid x87 until SSE2 was introduced in 2001. I was using AMD processors and they didn't get SSE2 support until 2003.
and 80-bit (long double) still works pretty well on x87... _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
