SHARC "short" float

[Randy Yates]

The SHARC 2136x has a "short float" of 16 bits, but I cannot find a
corresponding type in the compiler documentation. Does their C/C++
support 16-bit floats? Pointers would be appreciated.
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[Tim Wescott]

Randy Yates wrote:
> The SHARC 2136x has a "short float" of 16 bits, but I cannot find a
> corresponding type in the compiler documentation. Does their C/C++
> support 16-bit floats? Pointers would be appreciated.

If the compiler doesn't support short floats, it probably doesn't
support pointers to them either. (sorry, couldn't resist...).

If they use the gnu toolchain, it would be much more difficult to insert
a new (and to my mind somewhat dubious) new data type into the language.
If you're programming in C++, why not make your own data type?
Arithmetic types are particularly easy to implement -- all of the
operator overloading is very well defined for you. If you do it right
you'll incur the cost of a function call on each operation, but not much
more.

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Tim Wescott
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[Nils]

Tim Wescott wrote:
> If they use the gnu toolchain, it would be much more difficult to insert
> a new (and to my mind somewhat dubious) new data type into the language.

It is not *that* dubious. 16 bit floating point values have become
somewhat of a standard to store light intensities in graphics. Most
graphic cards on PC even support such float-modes as a native
representation and can do calculations in it.

Nils