Software: wcurl, Magit, and FEX
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Linuxiac ☛ wcurl Finds Its Place in the curl Family
wcurl, a simple curl wrapper that lets you use curl to download files without remembering any parameters, is now under curl's wing.
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LWN ☛ Magit 4.0 released
Version 4.0 of the Magit text-based Git user interface for Emacs has been released. Changes since the 3.3.0 release include the addition of context menus, a makeover for the menu-bar menu, new menu commands, and many other new features and bug fixes. See the release notes for full details.
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WINE or Emulation
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FEX ☛ FEX 2408 Tagged
In the beginning, there were integers.
And robots wanted precise math, and so the x87 floating point unit was created.
And robots wanted faster math, and so SSE was created to replace x87, and it was good.
Speeding up x87
Although x87 is slow and deprecated, it hasn’t disappeared. 64-bit games will use SSE or even AVX for floating point math, but older 32-bit binaries – compiled decades ago – are filled with x87.
FEX aims to support your entire game catalogue. Last release, we added AVX to support the newest games. This release, we’ve circled back to the oldest. Old games ought to run well on new hardware, but if they use x87, performance can nosedive. Why? Two x87 quirks: 80-bit precision and the stack.
Floating point numbers are typically 32-bits or 64-bits. 32-bit is faster, while 64-bit enhances precision for numerical computing. Our target Arm hardware supports both 32-bit and 64-bit, but x87 adds an unfortunate third mode: 80-bit. Ostensibly, the extra bits of precision in intermediate calculations minimizes the accumulated error of the final result.
Is that necessary? Careful code can mitigate rounding error without the massive 80-bit hammer, thanks to techniques like the Kahan summation algorithm. New code doesn’t miss the 80-bit hardware.
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