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Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2020 14:56:09 +0200
From: mayuresh@...he.in <mayuresh@...he.in>
To: musl@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: Posits support under Musl 
 libc?

On Monday, June 29, 2020 05:34 PM IST, Pascal Cuoq <cuoq@...st-in-soft.com> wrote: 
 
> > Can the "musl" libc project consider supporting the Posit number format in the math routines?
> 
> > More details;
> > https://posithub.org/docs/Posits4.pdf
> > https://posithub.org/docs/BeatingFloatingPoint.pdf
> 
> > And a sample implementation;
> > https://gitlab.com/cerlane/SoftPosit
> 
> I am not a musl contributor and have no say in what it should contain or not, but why in hell a software implementation of a non-standard floating-point format that only its inventor seems to think has any concrete advantage over IEEE 754 belong in a libc the goals of which are below?
> 
> “lightweight, fast, simple, free, and strives to be correct in the sense of standards-conformance and safety.” (from https://musl.libc.org/ )
> 
> Posits are 1 out of 5 (I think they are free).

Posits are lightweight, fast, free and produce the same results across platforms, something which IEEE 754 doesn't guarantee. To top that, IEEE 754 isn't even a standard but just a set of guidelines which are usually implemented incorrectly due to misinterpretation or lack of expertise. So in that sense, Posits are safer than Floating-point.

That makes Posits, 4 out of 5 (which seems a much better proposition).

~Mayuresh

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