std.math performance (SSE vs. real)

[via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 4 July 2014 at 19:53:11 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> I'm curious how that would affect anyone currently using 
> dmd/gdc/ldc in getting professional work done.

It doesn't affect them since they are on x86 (until they want to 
use co-processor auto-vectorization). As far as I can tell, also 
Intel CPUs such as Phi are faster if you skip on IEEE754 
conformance for denormal numbers. So I think this is a trend, 
backed empirically by CPUs by IBM, ARM and Intel.

The most important factor is that it does affect the credibility 
of the spec. The spec is the vision that people either embrace or 
reject. For those devs who aren't happy with status quo having a 
credible spec that the team is committed to is important, because 
it says what outcome they can expect if they start contributing. 
There is very little incentive to contribute if you think that 
the current D incarnation is insufficient, unless the team specs 
out what D is to become.

If you can commit to a spec for D2 that is final, then you can 
also plan for when D2 is done.