> However not all CPUs stall for subnormal data and if the CPU designers would have ensured that none of them stall, no such discussions would have been ever ne

> However not all CPUs stall for subnormal data and if the CPU designers would have ensured that none of them stall, no such discussions would have been ever needed. I don't really disagree (I've pushed hard for no subnormal stalls for years), but there are some timing and area tradeoffs that come with this that make it a somewhat hard sell for FPUs that aren't built entirely around FMA (there are tradeoffs even for designs that are purely FMA based, but they're a lot smaller). Mainstream x86 designs _still_ have some subnormal stalls!