Re: [Caml-list] Need for a built in round_to_int function

[Erik de Castro Lopo <ocaml-erikd@mega-nerd.com>]

On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 07:22:55 +1100
Erik de Castro Lopo <ocaml-erikd@mega-nerd.com> wrote:

> I've looked at the code for the O'Caml compiler and I think I 
> know how to implement this, at least for x86 and PowerPC, the two
> architectures I have access to. If I was to supply a patch would
> it be accepted?

OK, I have a patch that seems to do the right thing on x86 and
PowerPC:

    http://www.mega-nerd.com/tmp/round_to_int.diff

I'm not 100% happy with the mods to byterun/floats.c. In order to
use the C99 lrintf() function in caml_round_to_int() I had to
define _ISOC9X_SOURCE etc before including <math.h>. The real
solution (when using GCC) is to add -std=c99 to the command line.

Using the following test program:

    http://www.mega-nerd.com/tmp/round_to_int.ml

with the hacked ocamlopt compiler I'm getting about a 3 times speed
improvement using round_to_int on a Pentium III. The speedup on P4
is supposed to be even more because of the P4's deeper pipeline.
On PowerPC, there is no speedup because PowerPC has two separate
instructions for float to int, one which rounds and one which 
truncates.

I'd be interested in any comments from the official ocaml maintainers.
What are the chances of this going into the official distribution?

I also have access to a machine with a MIPS CPU. I don't know
MIPS assembler but I'll see what I can do.

Erik
-- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
  Erik de Castro Lopo  nospam@mega-nerd.com (Yes it's valid)
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
"I saw `cout' being shifted "Hello world" times to the left and
stopped right there." -- Steve Gonedes