[LV] Now for another bit of noise , ok any noise ...

[Kim Hawtin]

Maciej W. Rozycki wrote:
> On Tue, 3 Mar 2009, Jan-Benedict Glaw wrote:
> 
>>>  There is also the "long double" H-float type currently unsupported even 
>>> by GCC.  It should be straightforward to add too -- no rocket science 
>>> here.  It's optional for hardware, but at least the NVAX implements it in 
>>> silicon which makes it attractive for me. ;)
>> Guesswork is to add an encoder/decoder function to gcc/real.c and to
>> enable it. It's probably not all that clever to simply add it as
>> TFmode to vax-modes.def, but to add a command line option instead,
>> placing it into the override function (which already manages D vs. G
>> float format)?
> 
>  I don't think there is a need for a flag here.  Whoever does computation 
> on long doubles has to know what they are doing -- GCC and glibc already 
> handle the diversity.
> 
>> Anyone to write an emulator for hardware missing H_float support? Then
>> we'd unconditionally enable it for Linux :)
> 
>  There might be code available for some of the other platforms.  It would 
> be more interesting to investigate whether to do this in the kernel (as 
> the x86 and MIPS do for example) or in the C library (as suggested many 
> times in discussions on LKML) in a signal handler.  I have a slight 
> preference for the latter or at least I would like to try to see if that's 
> feasible if we ever come to it.
> 
>  That's a task for a distant future though -- let's make the necessary 
> bits first. ;)

So what tasks could I work on?

I'm a sysadmin by trade now, used to do lots of C, some ten years ago.
Was inspired at linux.conf.au this year to brush up those rusty C skills
and have been hacking away recently on a little app for the freerunner.

Have plenty of hardware at home to setup a build box and a couple of uVAXII's.
The 3100 netboots and has a bunch on internal scsi disks, although can't
remember the capacities. can probably fudge connectors to put a couple of
36GB drives in it. Have plenty of storage on NFS too.

Winter is coming and been looking for something to occupy the long winter
months =)

cheers,

Kim
-- 
Operating Systems, Services and Operations
Information Technology Services, The University of Adelaide
kim.hawtin at adelaide.edu.au
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