Posits - a new approach could sink floating point computation

I’m sure you [all] know about the new IEEE 754-2019.

http://754r.ucbtest.org/background/

It has e.g. “The relaxed ordering of NaNs” probably of interest, to Julia gurus (one area where posits win).

It has “new tanPi, aSinPi, and aCosPi operations are recommended” (previously not thought needed), and I’m curious if posits have similar (does it have any trigonometry, or all in libraries?)? I only know of the dotproduct (and a few more?) extra operations posits have standardized vs. regular IEEE.

Also e.g. “5.3.1 {min,max}{Num,NumMag} operations, formerly required, are now deleted” and “9.6 new {min,max}imum{,Number,Magnitude,MagnitudeNumber} operations are recommended; NaN and signed zero handling are changed from 754-2008 5.3.1.” seems interesting vs. posits.

1 Like