[Nottingham] Talk - Thursday 19th April & Re: [Nottingham] FPU and ALU test routines

[Jim Moore]

Thought I'd kill two with one stone here:

> From: Jason Cozens <jason.cozens at computer.org>
> Subject: Re: [Nottingham] Talk - Thursday 19th April
> To: nottingham at mailman.lug.org.uk
>
> OK, best get some notes ready!
>
> Where's the nearest parking to the Navigation? I normally park on Castle
> Boulevard, is there anywhere closer?
>
> Cheers,
> Jason.

After 6pm parking is free in Castle Road (between the college and the castle 
rock); Thursday is a good day as we can hear car alarms from the airgun club 
in the rock. Pop in whydontcha and say hi, I might even spend a couple hours 
in the talk :)

> Message: 5
> From: Martin <martin at ml1.co.uk>
> Subject: [Nottingham] FPU and ALU test routines
> Anyone know of any open source routines that comprehensively test a
> CPU's FPU and ALU?
>
> Are there any standard tests for the IEEE calculations requirements?
>
> Cheers,
> Martin

Closest I've found (not that I've looked very hard) is a package called 
FractINT by the Stone Soup Group (of which Tim Wegener and Mike Barnsley are 
members, for those who follow the mathematics of chaos). Version 20.0 is the 
latest and last, runs in DOS (even FreeDOS), Win, Lin, *BSD. Not entirely 
comprehensive but it does have floating point functions for i386. I use it to 
stress processors to the point of meltdown.

-- 
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and 
those who don't.