[Numpy-discussion] Does float16 exist?

[Bill Baxter]

On Jan 9, 2008 9:18 AM, Charles R Harris <charlesr.harris at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jan 8, 2008 5:01 PM, Bill Baxter <wbaxter at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Jan 9, 2008 8:03 AM, Charles R Harris <charlesr.harris at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > On Jan 8, 2008 1:58 PM, Bill Baxter < wbaxter at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > If you're really going to try to do it, Charles, there's an
> > > > implementation of float16 in the OpenEXR toolkit.
> > > > http://www.openexr.com/
> > > >
> > > > Or more precisely it's in the files in the Half/ directory of this:
> > > >
> http://download.savannah.nongnu.org/releases/openexr/ilmbase-1.0.1.tar.gz
> > > >
> > > > I don't know if it's IEEE conformant or not (especially w.r.t. NaN's
> > > > and such) but it should be a good start.  The code seems to be well
> > > > documented.
> > >
> > > The license looks good, essentially BSD. The code is all C++, which is
> the
> > > obvious way to go for this sort of thing, and I would like to stick with
> it,
> > > but that could lead to build/compatibility problems. I think NumPy
> itself
> > > should really be in C++.  Maybe scons can help with the build.
> >
> > Yeh, I was just thinking you'd rip out and C-ify the main algorithms
> > rather than trying to wrap it as-is.
>
> I'd rather not C-ify the thing, I'd rather C++-ify parts of NumPy. I note
> that MatPlotLab uses C++, so some of the problems must have been solved.

If you think that's easier then go for it.

As far as classes go, though, you pretty much won't find anything
easier than this to C-ify.  Or just to wrap in C.  No templates.  No
inheritance.  Just a simple value-type struct that supports a small
set of operations.

--bb