[Cfp-interest 1263] Re: agenda update

[David Hough CFP]

Action item: Check with IEEE group to see if there are any
implementations for Part 4b functions (hardware or software).

An inquiry on the 754 mailing list did not yield any definite claims of
implementing 754-2008 reduction operations.    Of course libraries like
the BLAS have summation and dot product operations but they don't necessarily
strive to avoid gratuitous exceptions.     The scaled reductions are not
known to be implemented although they are the most important:

The scaled reduction operations were intended to replace the wrapped
mode of overflow/underflow handling recommended in 1985.
The wrapped mode was inspired particularly by examples like computing
Clebsch-Gordan coefficients, which are ratios of products of factorials.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clebsch%E2%80%93Gordan_coefficients

So the scaled reduction operations were definitely intended to be recommended
to provide the needed capability in a way that can be used in portable
programs.

Having done that, the normal unscaled reductions were an easy addition,
but perhaps less readily justified.