Half_002dPrecision.html 6.6 KB

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  68. <a name="Half_002dPrecision-Floating-Point"></a>
  69. <h3 class="section">6.12 Half-Precision Floating Point</h3>
  70. <a name="index-half_002dprecision-floating-point"></a>
  71. <a name="index-_005f_005ffp16-data-type"></a>
  72. <p>On ARM and AArch64 targets, GCC supports half-precision (16-bit) floating
  73. point via the <code>__fp16</code> type defined in the ARM C Language Extensions.
  74. On ARM systems, you must enable this type explicitly with the
  75. <samp>-mfp16-format</samp> command-line option in order to use it.
  76. </p>
  77. <p>ARM targets support two incompatible representations for half-precision
  78. floating-point values. You must choose one of the representations and
  79. use it consistently in your program.
  80. </p>
  81. <p>Specifying <samp>-mfp16-format=ieee</samp> selects the IEEE 754-2008 format.
  82. This format can represent normalized values in the range of <em>2^{-14}</em> to 65504.
  83. There are 11 bits of significand precision, approximately 3
  84. decimal digits.
  85. </p>
  86. <p>Specifying <samp>-mfp16-format=alternative</samp> selects the ARM
  87. alternative format. This representation is similar to the IEEE
  88. format, but does not support infinities or NaNs. Instead, the range
  89. of exponents is extended, so that this format can represent normalized
  90. values in the range of <em>2^{-14}</em> to 131008.
  91. </p>
  92. <p>The GCC port for AArch64 only supports the IEEE 754-2008 format, and does
  93. not require use of the <samp>-mfp16-format</samp> command-line option.
  94. </p>
  95. <p>The <code>__fp16</code> type may only be used as an argument to intrinsics defined
  96. in <code>&lt;arm_fp16.h&gt;</code>, or as a storage format. For purposes of
  97. arithmetic and other operations, <code>__fp16</code> values in C or C++
  98. expressions are automatically promoted to <code>float</code>.
  99. </p>
  100. <p>The ARM target provides hardware support for conversions between
  101. <code>__fp16</code> and <code>float</code> values
  102. as an extension to VFP and NEON (Advanced SIMD), and from ARMv8 provides
  103. hardware support for conversions between <code>__fp16</code> and <code>double</code>
  104. values. GCC generates code using these hardware instructions if you
  105. compile with options to select an FPU that provides them;
  106. for example, <samp>-mfpu=neon-fp16 -mfloat-abi=softfp</samp>,
  107. in addition to the <samp>-mfp16-format</samp> option to select
  108. a half-precision format.
  109. </p>
  110. <p>Language-level support for the <code>__fp16</code> data type is
  111. independent of whether GCC generates code using hardware floating-point
  112. instructions. In cases where hardware support is not specified, GCC
  113. implements conversions between <code>__fp16</code> and other types as library
  114. calls.
  115. </p>
  116. <p>It is recommended that portable code use the <code>_Float16</code> type defined
  117. by ISO/IEC TS 18661-3:2015. See <a href="Floating-Types.html#Floating-Types">Floating Types</a>.
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