ProfitPress Mega CDROM2 …eeware (MSDOS)(1992)(Eng)/ProfitPress-MegaCDROM2.B6I/PROG/PASCAL/TPL60N14.ZIP/README.DOC

Text File | 1992-05-07 | 15.5 KB | 320 lines

     Turbo-Pascal 6.0 Runtime Libary Update - Release 1.4   05-07-1992

     This library is a complete replacement for the runtime library that
     came with your Turbo Pascal 6.0 compiler. Due to lots of optimizations,
     programs compiled with this version of TURBO.TPL will be faster.
     This library maintains 99.9% compatibility with the original library.
     Differences are usually due to enhancements and should not cause
     any compatibility problems. Some bugs from the original library
     supplied by Borland have been eliminated, but there can be no guarantee
     that new ones have not crept in. If you discover any bugs, or have
     other comments, please let me know. My email and snail mail addresses
     are given below. Due to the nature of Borland's licensing of the
     TPL source code I am not allowed to distribute the source code of
     my enhanced library, so I can only provide the binary.

     Original library code is Copyright (C) 1983,91 Borland International

     New / additional library code is Copyright (C) 1988-1992
     Norbert Juffa, Wielandtstr. 14, 7500 Karlsruhe 1, Germany
     Internet: [e-mail]


     Improvements in SYSTEM module
     -----------------------------

o    REAL type software arithmetic operations now comply with ANSI/IEEE
     Standard 754-1985 for Binary Floating Point Arithmetic [1,2] as much
     as possible. Note that REAL arithmetic by design differs from the
     standard in many ways, especially available numeric formats, value
     set, and available operations. The rounding mode implemented here
     is "round to nearest or even" as specified in the standard. Add,
     Subtract, Multiply, Division, and Square Root deliver exact results
     with regard to this rounding mode, as demanded by the standard.
     Conversions from REAL to LONGINT and from EXTENDED to REAL use
     rounding to nearest or even, as specified in the standard. Correct
     implementation of above features was tested with the PARANOIA test
     program [3]. The correctness of basic REAL arithmetic functions has
     also been tested against the coprocessor/emulator EXTENDED format
     with the program FUN1_TST. The EXTENDED format carries approximately
     19 decimal digits of precision.

o    REAL arithmetic operations have been sped up. Speed up is fourfold for
     SQRT (up to 22x on a 80386), twofold for FRAC and between 30% and 40%
     for ARCTAN, LN, EXP and division (2.5x speed up for division on 80386).
     Speed increase for SIN/COS functions is smaller (about 10%) since speed
     was sacrificed in favor of more accurate results here. Overall numeric
     processing power using REAL arithmetic increases by about 26% for an
     8086 and by 38% for an 80386 as measured by the WHETSTONE benchmark [4,5].

o    Overall accuracy of REAL arithmetic transcendental functions has been
     improved as indicated by Cody&Waite's ELEFUNT tests [6]: DLOG, DEXP,
     DATAN, DSIN. Correct argument reduction ensures that relative error
     over the whole argument range does not exceed 2.1e-12 for Exp, 3.1e-12
     for Arctan, and 2.7e-12 for Ln. These values have been determined
     by comparing the function returns of the REAL transcendental functions
     to the values computed with a Cyrix 83D87 coprocessor for the EXTENDED
     format. For Sin and Cos, relative error is also in the above range
     when the argument is reasonably small (e.g. in range -100..100) and
     not very close to an integer multiple of 0.5*Pi. Note that due to
     accurracy requirements, the range of Sin/Cos arguments has been
     reduced to -9.22337e18..9.22337e18. An error 207 (invalid float
     operation) will be signaled for arguments outside this range.

o    Execution of coprocessor floating point computations using an 80287 or
     80387 has been accelerated. For these coprocessors, NOPs will be inserted
     before every floating point instruction converted from an emulator
     interrupt instead of WAITs. As a result of this optimization, an
     improvement in execution speed of 14% has been observed running the
     Lawrence Livermore Loops (LLL) [7] on a Cyrix 83D87, the improvement
     for the WHETSTONE benchmark on the 83D87 is 9.4%.

o    On a 80287XL, 80387, or 80846 the Sin and Cos functions take advantage
     of the FSIN and FCOS instructions of these coprocessors, speeding up
     these functions by almost a factor of two. Also, the Arctan function
     takes advantage of the increased argument range of the FPATAN function.
     These optimizations result in another 19% increase in WHETSTONE power,
     so that the total combined speedup over the original library is 30%
     for this benchmark.

o    STRING operations are faster, especially for longer strings. Most
     dramatic increase is in the INSERT function, with execution times
     reduced to up to one fourth compared with the original version of RTL.
     Faster string operations cause 7% performance increase for the
     DHRYSTONE [8,9] benchmark on a 8086.

o    Improved speed of random number generation. Random for REAL numbers
     is 10% faster, Random for EXTENDED numbers is 5% faster, no speed
     difference for Integer Random function.

o    Binary to decimal conversions used in Str and Write procedures have
     been sped up by up to 70% for integers (BYTE, SHORTINT, INTEGER,
     WORD, LONGINT), up to 5% for REAL numbers and about 3% for EXTENDED
     numbers.

o    Improved speed of LONGINT arithmetic. Division enjoys fourfold
     reduction of execution time on 8086, for an 80386 the speed up
     factor is 6.7.

o    Several of the functions of the heap manager have been tuned,
     giving up to 10% faster operation for these routines.

o    Set functions have been sped up by a few percent, but the add
     variable range operation may be up to eight times as fast.

o    UPCASE function has been enhanced to support the complete IBM character
     set. This means that characters ä,ü,ö,å,æ,é,ñ,ç are converted to upper
     case by this function.

o    Several bugs have been fixed:

     Using REAL arithmetic in $N- mode, Trunc and Round could not produce
     the smallest legal LONGINT number -2147483648. Arguments that should
     result in this number caused a run time error 207 instead. Trunc/Round
     now will return the correct result of -2147483648. Correct implementation
     can be checked using the ROUNDTST program.

     The Random function could return 1.0 when compiled in the $N+ state,
     although the specifications call for a return value 0 <= Random < 1.
     This has been corrected. Return values from Random will be strictly
     smaller than 1 now.

     GetDir now correctly returns a run-time error 15 (invalid drive)
     when called with a non existent drive. Differing from the original,
     it also signals all errors reported by DOS as run-time errors. E.g.
     when applied to a floppy drive that does not contain a floppy, it
     will now return run-time error 152 (drive not ready), where previously
     it would incorrectly signal successful completion of the operation
     (InOutRes = 0).

     LONGINT Read and Val routines now accept the smallest LONGINT
     number -2147483648 as decimal input.

     For programs compiled with $N+, only true INFs are printed out as
     INF where with the original library some NaNs are also printed as
     INF. Correct operation can be tested with the INFBUG program.

     Addition/Subtraction of REAL arithmetic sometimes was unnecessarily
     inaccurate due to incorrect handling of discarded digits of the
     operand with smaller absolute value. This has been fixed with the
     introduction of a completely new add/subtract routine.

     Multiplication of REAL numbers by small integers was inaccurate,
     causing among others problems unnecessary inaccuracies in binary
     <-> decimal conversion. This has been eliminated with the new
     REAL arithmetic modules.

     REAL arithmetic EXP functions no longer signals overflow when
     called with small arguments, but underflows to zero instead as it
     should.

     Denormals in EXTENDED computations no longer cause invalid state
     on 8087 coprocessor when being converted to true zeros. Consistency
     between register contents and tag bits is now asserted. Removal of
     this bug can be tested with the BUG87 program.

     Stack checking routine for programs compiled in the $S+ state now
     reliably detects all stack overflows. This bug in TP 6.0 has also
     been fixed in the second release of TP 6.0 by Borland, but Borland's
     code is slower than the one used here.

     Program initialization routine now tries to prevent that programs
     compiled with the $G+ (286 code generation) switch are run on 8086
     and 8088. The checks done are not 100% safe, but catch most of these
     cases, displaying the message "CPU > 8086 required" and aborting the
     program instead of letting it crash. Note that this check lets programs
     compiled with $G+ run on 80186 and V20/V30 processors, since these
     have the ability to execute all 80286 real mode instructions produced
     by Turbo Pascal.

o    Improved functionality only marginally increases overall code length
     of the SYSTEM unit by 413 bytes (slightly more than 2%). This is due
     to careful optimizing in numerous routines. Most programs compiled
     with the new RTL will be smaller due to finer granularity of the RTL
     modules. Savings are usually in the 1 KB range for reasonably large
     programs.


     Improvements in DOS module
     --------------------------

o    Decreased code size by careful optimization of register usage in
     some routines.


     Improvements in CRT module
     --------------------------

o    Bug fix in routine DirectWrite. The method used to prevent "snow"
     when writing directly to a CGA graphics card was not entirely save.
     When used in a heavily interrupted program (e.g. serial communication
     as a background task), it would not always write during the time
     when scanning was in the invisible parts of the screen. The method
     used now is 100% save and is even faster, since it takes advantage
     of the horizontal and vertical retrace periods, as opposed to the
     old method which only used the horizontal retrace time. New routine
     has been tested successfully on original IBM-CGA card.


     Changes since version 1.3, dated 05-01-92
     -----------------------------------------

o    Fixed bug that incorrectly set Test8087 variable for 8087/80287
     coprocessors.

o    Fixed bug in Log function error return. It would return the biggest
     possible REAL number before if called with an argument <= 0. It now
     correctly raises error 207 (invalid floating-point operation).


     Changes since version 1.2, dated 11-01-92
     -----------------------------------------

o    Fixed bug in Rename procedure. Due to this error, Rename would not
     work at all, but always return with error code 3 (path not found).
     This has been corrected. This error was reported by ShinKuang Chang
     ([e-mail]). Thanks!

o    Cleaned up the source code of the ELEFUNT test programs a bit. Since
     these programs were ported from the FORTRAN original in a 'quick and
     dirty' way, they were looking quite messy.


     Changes since version 1.1 beta, dated 04-01-92
     ----------------------------------------------

o    The Round and Trunc functions were unable to produce the smallest
     LONGINT number, -2147483648. If a call to these functions resulted
     in this number, an error was raised instead of returning the correct
     result. This has been fixed. Valid inputs to the Trunc functions are
     real numbers x for which -2147483649 < x < 2147483648 holds. Valid
     inputs to the Round function are numbers x for which -2147483648.5
     <= x < 2147483647.5 holds.


     Changes since first beta release (version 1.0, dated 03-21-92)
     --------------------------------------------------------------

o    Fixed bug in the routine that adds variable ranges to sets (as in
     s := [foo..bar], where s is a set and foo and bar are variables of
     the set's base type.

o    Switched back code in the REAL add/subtract routine to plain 8086
     code. Forgot to remove the use386 flag when building code for the
     original release 1.0 beta.


     Changes since the alpha release
     -------------------------------

o    There was an error in the 8087 float to string conversion in the
     alpha release which has been fixed.

o    A bug in the coprocessor identification that sets the Test8087 variable
     present in the alpha release has been fixed.

o    For string -> LONGINT conversion, it is now possible to input the
     smallest LONGINT number -2147483648 in decimal.

o    An enhanced argument reduction has been implemented for REAL arithmetic
     SIN, COS, and EXP function, delivering much more accurate results over
     the complete argument range. This has slowed these functions down
     somewhat, however, none of them runs slower than in the original TP 6.01
     RTL. As a result of the new argument reduction, arguments to SIN and
     COS are restricted to the range -3.37325e9..3.37325e9 now. Arguments to
     these functions were previously unrestricted. For arguments outside the
     range given, an error 207 will result. This is consistent with the
     coprocessor/emulator generated SIN/COS functions, that also signal
     error 207 for arguments out of range (-9.22337e18..9.22337e18).

o    SIN, COS, and ARCTAN functions compiled in the $N+ state will now use
     the faster coprocessor instructions available on the 387 and 486 if
     such a coprocessor/FPU is present.

o    A check has been included to prevent programs compiled with $G+ (286 code
     generation) to run on a 8086.

o    The Random function has been fixed to return value strictly smaller than
     1 when compiled with $N+.


     References
     ----------

[1]  IEEE: IEEE Standard for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic.
     SIGPLAN Notices, Vol. 22, No. 2, 1985, pp. 9-25

[2]  IEEE Standard for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic.
     ANSI/IEEE Std 754-1985.
     New York, NY: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 1985

[3]  Karpinski, R.: Paranoia: A Floating-Point Benchmark.
     Byte, February 1985, pp. 223-235

[4]  Curnow, H.J.; Wichmann, B.A.: A synthetic benchmark.
     Computer Journal, Vol. 19, No. 1, 1976, pp. 43-49

[5]  Wichmannn, B.A.: Validation code for the Whetstone benchmark.
     NPL Report DITC 107/88, National Physics Laboratory, UK, March 1988

[6]  Cody, W.J.; Waite, W.: Software Manual for the Elementary Functions.
     Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall 1980

[7]  McMahon, H.H.: The Livermore Fortran Kernels: A Test of the Numerical
     Performance Range.
     Technical Report UCRL-53745, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
     December 1986, p. 179

[8]  Weicker, R.P.: Dhrystone: A Synthetic Systems Programming Benchmark.
     Communications of the ACM, Vol. 27, No. 10, October 1984, pp. 1013-1030

[9]  Weicker, R.P.: Dhrystone Benchmark: Rationale for Version 2 and
     Measurement Rules.
     SIGPLAN Notices, Vol. 23, No. 8, August 1988, pp. 49-62

     Note:

     PARANOIA, DHRYSTONE, WHETSTONE, LLL, and ELEFUNT source code is
     available from [e-mail]