Hello syphilis,

While searching the IBM site, I found a Redbook that describes the use of the DFP hardware and software. It stated that 3 Linux distributions ( Redhat, SUSE, and Ubuntu ) support the hardware and software DFP. It had a link to download the software, which if the hardware is present, will use the hardware, otherwise is does the calculation(s) in software. So it may be available for your Ubuntu system??? The Redbook stated that the software was designed to co-exist with binary floating point.

I honestly don't know enough now to give a good answer about which OS, but I'll be looking into the subject and hope to know more soon. The announcement letter for power8 says hardware supports both bigendian and littleendian. How, I don't know yet!

The newest RS\6000 (p-series) that I have is power5 (bigendian), so I can't use any of the new features.

Just so you know, Google, Hitachi and several other companies are coming out with non-IBM power8 computers during 2015. While IBM's entry level systems are around $10K, the non-IBM versions are projected to be less than $3K. Hopefully Google will want to dominate the market and build an entry level around the price point of Intel/AMD PCs. But that's just a wish!

I don't have much time until March, but I am interested in furthering this capability for Perl, so lets keep in touch.

Best Regards...Ed

"Well done is better than well said." - Benjamin Franklin

In reply to Re^4: Decimal Floating Point (DFP) and does Perl needs DFP? by flexvault
in thread Decimal Floating Point (DFP) and does Perl needs DFP? by flexvault

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