Comparison of Two Recent Approaches to Machine Parameterization for Mathematical Software

摘要

There have been published two different proposals for expressing the dependence of numerical software on the environment. One proposal characterizes the dependence of the software on the machine architecture essentially in terms of the representation of floating-point entities in the machine. The second characterizes the dependence of the software on the environment in terms of models both of the floating-point numbers and of the behavior of the arithmetic unit of the machine. The purpose of this paper is to expose and clarify the differences and similarities between these two approaches. It is the author's opinion that the two approaches interpreted in their strictest sense serve two distinct purposes. When each is interpreted imprecisely, their roles overlap. In order that the comparisons briefly discussed be fully understood, the separate approaches are briefly summarized. (ERA citation 04:028607)