This document describes Decimal Floating Point Abstraction Layer (DFPAL) implementation. DFPAL is a module written in C programming language. DFPAL detects availability of operating system and hardware support for the decimal floating point at runtime. If such support is available, it automatically branches into the hardware path and utilizes hardware for the decimal floating point arithmetic. On other hand, if operating system or hardware does not support decimal floating point (on POWER5++ or other processor architecture, for example) DFPAL branches into the software path and uses the decNumber module. The decNumber arithmetic module is software implementation of the decimal floating point arithmetic.
Source code for DFPAL is available from International Components for Unicode (ICU) DFPAL package.
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DFPAL is authored by Punit Shah (punit@us.ibm.com).
Please send any corrections, comments or questions to dfpal-l@austin.ibm.com.
| This page was updated on 21 Dec 2007. |