[mpiwg-p2p] FP16 16-bit-floating-point

[Anthony Skjellum]

Rolf, apart from the Fortan angle, may I strongly encourage that we adopt
this datatype for MPI-4.  It is part of real MPI codes already, but now we
have to fake transfer datatypes as 16-bit integers or bytes... which means
not really right if heterogeneous interoperability were to be maintained.
And this is a canonical IEEE type now, as you note.  There is also the "2
half-float" datatype (32-bits) at least in CUDA to be looked at; maybe
ignored or maybe supported, but it is there too.  Key to this MPI users and
applications use half floats and 2 half-floats :-) in practice.

May I also suggest a forward look at the types in AVX-512, in case any of
these become particularly relevant in future.
At least 8-bit integers are conceptually new, apart from BYTE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVX-512

Regards,
Tony


On Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 6:52 AM, Rolf Rabenseifner <rabenseifner at hlrs.de>
wrote:

> Hi all together,
>
> I'm sitting in the MPI Forum Meeting and we discuss the new IEEE FP16
> datatype.
>
> Questions to the Fortran atandardization body:
>
> - Does the Fortran Standardization Body has already a proposal for
>   the new name in Fortran for this IEEE FP16?
>
> - Will be REAL*2 identical to IEEE FP16?
>
> Best regards
> Rolf
>
> --
> Dr. Rolf Rabenseifner . . . . . . . . . .. email rabenseifner at hlrs.de .
> High Performance Computing Center (HLRS) . phone ++49(0)711/685-65530 .
> University of Stuttgart . . . . . . . . .. fax ++49(0)711 / 685-65832 .
> Head of Dpmt Parallel Computing . . . www.hlrs.de/people/rabenseifner .
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-- 
Tony Skjellum, PhD
RunTime Computing Solutions, LLC
tony at runtimecomputing.com
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