Re: [hatari-devel] FPU update

[Toni Wilen <twilen@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> There are definitely bugs remaining with native floats. The most severe
> one is related to the way that x87 handles denormalized extended

<snip>

IMHO attempting to fix those are not worth the trouble but also remember
that there is huge difference between Next and Amiga (and I assume Atari
too) FPU use cases.

FPU is mostly used for basic maths and OS does not use or require FPU.
Only (much) more expansive models had FPU. Practically no one uses FPU
instructions like FMOD or arithmetic exceptions and so on (I guess some
complex 3d renderers may be an exception). It is mainly add, sub, neg,
abs, mul, div, tst and cmp, no too small or too large numbers used.
Native FPU is perfectly fine in this use case.

Then there is Next that is something completely different, FPU is
standard, OS uses FPU for everything possible (and more!) where small
rounding or accuracy errors can cause corrupted desktop graphics or
fonts. It even uses packed FPU datatype heavily. Softfloat being the
default (or even the only option) makes sense in this situation.