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I've never even heard of people using custom float formats outside of an fpga. And bignum seems useful for things that are not cpu-bound. If you need simd, or
by galangalalgol 3y ago
I've never even heard of people using custom float formats outside of an fpga. And bignum seems useful for things that are not cpu-bound. If you need simd, or vectorization, including gpu acceleration, you use the format the hardware and compiler/optimizer support to meet your throughput needs. And on x86_64 aarch64 or spirv, thats a ieee floating point for better or worse.
- lmm 3y ago> I've never even heard of people using custom float formats outside of an fpga. It's normal and expected for ML these days (not completely custom, but smaller than the IEEE floats). And I think for gaming graphics too. > If you need simd, or vectorization, including gpu acceleration, you use the format the hardware and compiler/optimizer support to meet your throughput needs. And on x86_64 aarch64 or spirv, thats a ieee floating point for better or worse. If you need to do it on the CPU, sure. (Even then, you probably don't want to use full IEEE754, you will likely disable subnormals for performance). If you're using the GPU then you'll likely be using something else. The niche that IEEE754 fits is pretty narrow - it works for non-HPC physics simulations because it was designed for that, but that's about it.