Re: [PATCH][Fortran] Use MIN/MAX_EXPR for intrinsics or __builtin_fmin/max when appropriate

[Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de>]

Hi Kyrill,

> The current implementation expands to:
>      mvar = a1;
>      if (a2 .op. mvar || isnan (mvar))
>        mvar = a2;
>      if (a3 .op. mvar || isnan (mvar))
>        mvar = a3;
>      ...
>      return mvar;
> 
> That is, if one of the operands is a NaN it will return the other argument.
> If both (all) are NaNs, it will return NaN. This is the same as the 
> semantics of fmin/max
> as far as I can tell.

I've looked at the F2008 standard, and, interestingly enough, the
requirement on MIN and MAX do not mention NaNs at all. 13.7.106
has, for MAX,

Result Value. The value of the result is that of the largest argument.

plus some stuff about character variables (not relevant here).  Similar
for MIN.

Also, the section on IEEE_ARITHMETIC (14.9) does not mention
comparisons; also, "Complete conformance with IEC 60559:1989 is not
required", what is required is the correct support for +,-, and *,
plus support for / if IEEE_SUPPORT_DIVIDE is covered.

So, the Fortran standard does not impose many requirements. I do think
that a patch such as yours should not change the current behavior unless
we know what it does and do think it is a good idea.  Hmm...

Having said that, I think we pretty much cover all the corner cases
in nan_1.f90, so if that test passes without regression, then that
aspect should be fine.

Question: You have found an advantage on Aarm64. Do you have
access to other architectures so see if there is also a speed
advantage, or maybe a disadvantage?

Regards

	Thomas