half datatype?

[xenon325]

On Friday, 23 November 2012 at 06:10:38 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 11/22/2012 7:03 PM, xenon325 wrote:
>> I would think it's actually not preferable.
>> Imagine you developed and tuned all the code on x86 and 
>> everything is fine. Then
>> run it on ARM and suddenly all computations are inaccurate.
>
> Floating point algorithms don't get less precise when precision 
> is increased. I can't think of any.

Actually I meant opposite: on x86 you would work with (kind of) 
32-bit `half` and on ARM with 16-bit.

Then, suppose I did math analysis, and picked up algorithms which 
*should* work correctly, but I have missed something and for 
0.01% of input rounding error is too big on 16-bits, but 
invisible on 32-bits.

If I develop on x86 (with 32-bit precision) and run my app on ARM 
(16-bit precision), than I'm messed up.

Anyway all this beside the point, as Manu have explained me in 
other reply.