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From: robison@uiucdcsb.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: How does compiled code use the floa
Message-ID: <165100001@uiucdcsb>
Date: Sun, 7-Dec-86 01:04:00 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcsb.165100001
Posted: Sun Dec  7 01:04:00 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 7-Dec-86 21:03:19 EST
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Nf-From: uiucdcsb.cs.uiuc.edu!robison    Dec  7 00:04:00 1986


I've heard of another scheme, but never tried it:

Code generation emits a call to a floating point library.
If the FP hardware is available, the library routine changes 
(at run time) the call instruction to the equivalent hardware 
instruction.  This way you pay for the subroutine linkage only 
on the first call. The disadvantage is that self-modifying code 
is not allowed on some architectures.

Arch D. Robison					robison@uiucdcs
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign