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- From: n-dade@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu ()
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
- Subject: Re: how do the math libraries work?
- Date: 7 Apr 1994 22:09:29 GMT
- Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
- Lines: 29
- Message-ID: <2o20ap$klh@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>
- References: <2nulca$k04@tornews.torolab.ibm.com>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
-
- mail delivery system here says "rs6nltc.torolab.ibm.com"? Host
- unknown!, so I post instead:
-
- In comp.sys.amiga.programmer you write:
-
- >Someone told me that if I use the math libraries in my C programs,
- >they will automatically use a math co-processor if it is
- >available, yet will still work on machines that lack one.
- >Is this true?
-
- Yes, for the IEEE math libraries. No for the ffp libraries.
- When the IEEE libraries are opened for the first time they
- look around for
-
- 1) an 6888x hooked directly to the cpu (by looking at the AttnFlags in execbase
- 2) a memory mapped 6888x or equivalent (by looking for a IEEEMathResource)
- 3) and if neither is found, they use their own software routines.
-
- Once the library has decided how it is going to do its math, it
- creates its jump table so that the library vectors go straight to
- the correct routines. (This way it doesn't spend time deciding how
- to perform each math operation each time it is asked to perform a
- math operation).
-
- The IEEEMathResource lets you have an 6888x in a 68000 system.
-
- -Nicolas Dade / n9rzb / nicolas-dade@uiuc.edu
-