Subnormals are a dirty hack to squeeze a bit more breathing space around zero fo... | Hacker News

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		hoseja 6 months ago \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: “A calculator app? Anyone could make that” Subnormals are a dirty hack to squeeze a bit more breathing space around zero for people who really need it. They aren't even really supported in hardware. Using them in normal contexts is usually an error.

pclmulqdq 6 months ago [–]

As of 2025, they finally have hardware support from Intel and AMD. IIRC it took until Zen 2 and Ice Lake to do this.

hoseja 6 months ago | [–]

Oh joy! Just in time for all computation to move to GPUs running eight-bit "floats".

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