GENERAL-PURPOSE FLOATING-POINT SYSTEMS - HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE ISSUES

[David G Hough at validgh]

Dear Colleague,

Professors W. Kahan and R. Fateman, from UC Berkeley, and Prof. I. Koren
plan to offer a three-day short course entitled:

 GENERAL-PURPOSE FLOATING-POINT SYSTEMS - HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE ISSUES

Tentative dates Thur. August 13 - Sat. August 15, 1998, in Berkeley,
California.
Course web page:  http://www.aime.com/fp98/

This is an updated and extended course based on the feedback we received
last time Professor Kahan and I offered such a course in June 1997. 

This short course will cover:

* The IEEE Floating-point standard
* Floating-point units - design principles (operations to be implemented
  in hardware, common algorithms for their implementations, pipelining,
  rounding, coping with special cases like gradual underflow)
* Floating-point exceptions - why they should not be handled by the
  OS, how to live with imprecise interrupts, linguistic inconveniences
* Instruction sets - the three predominant designs, historical
  blunders, comparisons 
* Language and compilers - the issue of access to full floating-point
  facilities the software level, language standards, semantics, and
  portability 
* Libraries of elementary functions
* Testing and validating floating-point hardware and libraries

We would like to know whether there is an interest in your company in 
this course and a rough estimate of the number of people who may want
to attend. Attendance is limited and registrations will be
accepted on a first come first served basis. Last time this course was
offered we had to turn down about 20 people.
The registration fee is $895/person ($795/person for 5 or more from the 
same company) for early registration (prior to July 31, 1998).

Details about the course, registration form, some attendees' comments 
on the previous 2-day courses (offered in January 1996 and June 1997),
and other items can be found in the course web page at:

      http://www.aime.com/fp98/ 

Sincerely,
Israel Koren
Professor
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003
Tel: (413)545-2643
FAX: (413)545-1993
E-Mail: korenaeuler.ecs.umass.edu