Re: [musl] Posits support under Musl libc?

["mayuresh@kathe.in" <mayuresh@kathe.in>]

On Monday, June 29, 2020 05:34 PM IST, Pascal Cuoq <cuoq@trust-in-soft.com> wrote:

> > Can the "musl" libc project consider supporting the Posit number format in the math routines?
>
> > More details;
> > https://posithub.org/docs/Posits4.pdf
> > https://posithub.org/docs/BeatingFloatingPoint.pdf
>
> > And a sample implementation;
> > https://gitlab.com/cerlane/SoftPosit
>
> I am not a musl contributor and have no say in what it should contain or not, but why in hell a software implementation of a non-standard floating-point format that only its inventor seems to think has any concrete advantage over IEEE 754 belong in a libc the goals of which are below?
>
> “lightweight, fast, simple, free, and strives to be correct in the sense of standards-conformance and safety.” (from https://musl.libc.org/ )
>
> Posits are 1 out of 5 (I think they are free).

Posits are lightweight, fast, free and produce the same results across platforms, something which IEEE 754 doesn't guarantee. To top that, IEEE 754 isn't even a standard but just a set of guidelines which are usually implemented incorrectly due to misinterpretation or lack of expertise. So in that sense, Posits are safer than Floating-point.

That makes Posits, 4 out of 5 (which seems a much better proposition).

~Mayuresh