Collection of Tools & Utilities/Collection of Tools and Utilities.iso/pascal/bpl70n15.zip/README.DOC

Text File | 1994-03-18 | 19KB | 374 lines

     Borland-Pascal 7.0 Runtime Libary Update - Release 1.4   18-MAR-1994


     Welcome to BPL70N15.ZIP, a collection of fast replacement libraries
     for your Turbo Pascal 7.0 / Borland Pascal 7.0 compiler. There are
     three libraries in this package, a real mode library (TURBO.TPL), a
     DOS protected mode library (TPP.TPL), and a Windows library (TPW.TPL).
     Every file is a complete replacement for the original library bearing
     the same name that came with your Pascal compiler. Due to the many
     optimizations in the replacement libraries, many programs compiled
     with these libraries will run faster. For more detailed information
     on possible performance improvements, see the file PERFORM.DOC. Only
     performance information for real mode and DOS protected mode programs
     can be provided at the moment.

     Those users already familiar with my previous project, the fast
     replacement library for Turbo Pascal 6.0 (distributed as TPL60N19.ZIP),
     may be disappointed that not all the features of that program have
     been included in BPL70N15.ZIP yet. I don't have much time at the moment,
     but still wanted to provide a BP 7.0 version of my library as soon as
     possible. So I decided to port the performance relevant stuff first
     and work on the other aspects later.

     The libaries in BPL70N15 maintain 99.9% compatibility with the original
     libraries. Differences are mostly caused by bug fixes and enhancements.
     Some bugs from the original libraries supplied by Borland have been
     eliminated, but there can be no guarantee that new ones have not crept
     in. Most of the code in the BPL70N15.ZIP libraries was ported from the
     latest version of my fast replacement library for Turbo Pascal 6.0,
     TPL60N19.ZIP, which has been proven to be a stable and reliable product.

     If you discover any bugs, or have other comments, please let me know.
     My email and snail mail addresses are given below. Although I am under
     severe time constraints, I will try as hard as possible to fix any bugs
     reported in as short a time as possible.

     The legal conditions under which Borland is distributing the source code
     of the Borland Pascal 7.0 run-time libraries are not entirely clear to me.
     To stay on the safe side, I assume that they are the same as for the RTL
     source for the TP 6.0 compiler. Under these conditions, I am not allowed
     to distribute modified source modules from the library. I may only
     provide the binaries to third parties. However, some of the modules in
     the BPL70N15.ZIP libaries do not contain a single line of code written
     by Borland and are written entirely by me. I am including the source for
     these modules for your reference. The source of the arithmetic routines
     can be found in the file ARISOURC.ZIP. The source code of most of the
     string routines is contained in the file STRSOURC.ZIP. The code of the
     arithmetic and string routines is hereby released into the public domain.
     You may use it in your own programs under the condition that you do not
     include it into a commercial product. Parties interested in commercial
     use of my code should contact me at my address below.


     Original library code is Copyright (C) 1983,92 Borland International


     New / additional library code is Copyright (C) 1988-1994

     Norbert Juffa, Wielandtstr. 14, 76137 Karlsruhe, Germany
     Internet: [e-mail]



     Contents of this document:

     I.   Capabilities of RTL replacement
     II.  Revision History
     III. References



     I. Capabilities of RTL replacement
     ==================================


     General note:

     BPL70N15 provides you with optimized libraries, it does not enhance
     the code produced by the Borland Pascal compiler. Thus, only code
     that uses many library calls can be expected to experience significant
     performance advantages. Library calls are made by BP 7.0 to operate
     on LONGINTs, STRINGs, REALs, SETs, perform heap operations such as
     allocating and deallocating memory (New, Dispose, GetMem, FreeMem),
     as well as to perform other tasks. One exception where BPL70N15 speeds
     up your code although no calls to optimized library routines are
     made is floating-point applications using a 287 or 387 coprocessor.

     If want to speed up your applications even further than can be
     accomplished by using BPL70N15, you might want to look at the
     "Sally TPU peephole optimizer" (SPO for short) written by Morten
     Welinder ([e-mail]). Unlike BPL70N15, this program is not in
     the public domain, but Morten grants free use of the program for
     personal, non-commercial use. SPO is a peephole optimizer that aims
     at optimizing the code produced by the Pascal compiler. Peephole
     optimizations means that the optimizer looks at a rather small
     collection of machine instructions at a time and replaces certain
     sequences it finds with optimized code. A TPU-optimizer speeds up
     those parts of a program that can't be enhanced by a replacement
     library and vice versa. So it might be a good idea to combine both
     tools to get the best performance out of your BP 7.0 programs. The
     SPO optimizer is currently distributed as a file SPO120.ZIP. It
     should be available from all ftp-sites that carry BPL70N15 and in
     particular can be downloaded from garbo.uwasa.fi, which is the upload
     site for the program. Please note that this is not intended to be
     an endorsement of the program. Rather, the info provided should be
     thought of as being a service to those users of BPL70N15 who want
     to speed up their programs even further than possible by using
     BPL70N15.


     Improvements in SYSTEM module
     -----------------------------

o    REAL type software arithmetic operations now comply with ANSI/IEEE
     Standard 754-1985 for Binary Floating Point Arithmetic [1,2] as much
     as possible. Note that REAL arithmetic by design differs from the
     standard in many ways, especially available numeric formats, value
     set, and available operations. The rounding mode implemented here
     is "round to nearest or even" as specified by the standard. Add,
     Subtract, Multiply, Squaring, Division, and Square Root deliver
     exact results with regard to this rounding mode, as demanded by the
     standard. Conversions from REAL to LONGINT and from EXTENDED to REAL
     use rounding to nearest or even, as specified in the standard. Correct
     implementation of above features was tested with the PARANOIA test
     program [3]. The correctness of basic REAL arithmetic functions has
     also been tested against the coprocessor/emulator EXTENDED format
     with the program FUN1_TST. The EXTENDED format carries approximately
     19 decimal digits of precision. This description applies to all three
     libraries in the package.

o    REAL arithmetic operations have been sped up. Speed-up for SQRT varies
     between a factor of 11 for a 8086 and 30 for a 486DLC. FRAC now executes
     at twice the original speed and speed-up is between 50% and 100% for
     SIN, COS, ARCTAN, LN, EXP and division (2.8x speed up for division on
     80386). Overall numeric processing power using REAL arithmetic increases
     by about 52% for an 8086 and by 85% for an Cyrix 486DLC as measured
     by the WHETSTONE benchmark [4,5]. This description applies to all three
     libraries, but the actual values cited are for the real mode library
     TURBO.TPL and may be different for the other libraries. In general,
     DOS protected mode and Windows programs tend to be slower than real mode
     programs by 5-50%.

o    Overall accuracy of REAL arithmetic transcendental functions has been
     improved as indicated by Cody&Waite's ELEFUNT tests [6]: DLOG, DEXP,
     DATAN, DSIN. Correct argument reduction ensures that relative error
     over the whol