It has always disappointed me that Microsoft dropped support for extended-precision 80-bit floating-point variables from Visual C++. Other compilers like Intel C++, Borland C++, GCC, PowerBASIC, Intel Fortran, and a few others do support them. And of course MASM supports them. Eric Fleegal from Microsoft talks about it here (http://blogs.msdn.com/ericflee/archive/2007/09/15/the-trouble-with-long-double.aspx).
He mentions a 128-bit floating-point data type. If Intel and AMD would support it in hardware then we would really have something.
QuoteThe point is now rapidly becoming moot. 80-bit doubles seem so “last century”. We are approaching the day when most new Windows systems will have FPUs that easily support the 128bit long double format.
:eek Err, What FPU supports 128bit long double format? AFAIK there is only 32,64 and 80 bit on x86 machines. Unless he is taking about emulation.
I'm not sure if he means emulation or that it could easily be done in hardware. It would fit nicely in an SSE register.
Here's a thought, extend the x87 instructions to work with the new format. That would breathe some fire into x87 assembly code. ... Not likely.
Sooner or later the hardware will have to support higher precision than 64 bit as FP x87 is being phased out over time. A 128 bit precision SSE? would be a good substitute and probably a lot faster than the old x87.