The flt-32 implementation of erfcf produces spurious underflow
exceptions for some arguments close to 0, because of calculations
squaring the argument and then multiplying by small constants. This
patch fixes this by adjusting the threshold for arguments for which
the result is so close to 1 that 1 - x will give the right result from
2**-56 to 2**-26. (If 1 - x * 2/sqrt(pi) were used, the errors would be
on the order of x^3 and a much larger threshold could be used.)
Tested for x86_64 and x86.
[BZ #18217]
* sysdeps/ieee754/flt-32/s_erff.c (__erfcf): Use 2**-26 not 2**-56
as threshold for returning 1 - x.
* math/auto-libm-test-in: Add more tests of erfc.
* math/auto-libm-test-out: Regenerated.
Bug 16516 reports spurious underflows from erf (for all floating-point
types), when the result is close to underflowing but does not actually
underflow.
erf (x) is about (2/sqrt(pi))*x for x close to 0, so there are
subnormal arguments for which it does not underflow. The various
implementations do (x + efx*x) (for efx = 2/sqrt(pi) - 1), for greater
accuracy than if just using a single multiplication by an
approximation to 2/sqrt(pi) (effectively, this way there are a few
more bits in the approximation to 2/sqrt(pi)). This can introduce
underflows when efx*x underflows even though the final result does
not, so a scaled calculation with 8*efx is done in these cases - but 8
is not a big enough scale factor to avoid all such underflows. 16 is
(any underflows with a scale factor of 16 would only occur when the
final result underflows), so this patch changes the code to use that
factor. Rather than recomputing all the values of the efx8 variable,
it is removed, leaving it to the compiler's constant folding to
compute 16*efx. As such scaling can also lose underflows when the
final scaling down happens to be exact, appropriate checks are added
to ensure underflow exceptions occur when required in such cases.
Tested x86_64 and x86; no ulps updates needed. Also spot-checked for
powerpc32 and mips64 to verify the changes to the ldbl-128ibm and
ldbl-128 implementations.
[BZ #16516]
* sysdeps/ieee754/dbl-64/s_erf.c (efx8): Remove variable.
(__erf): Scale by 16 instead of 8 in potentially underflowing
case. Ensure exception if result actually underflows.
* sysdeps/ieee754/flt-32/s_erff.c (efx8): Remove variable.
(__erff): Scale by 16 instead of 8 in potentially underflowing
case. Ensure exception if result actually underflows.
* sysdeps/ieee754/ldbl-128/s_erfl.c: Include <float.h>.
(efx8): Remove variable.
(__erfl): Scale by 16 instead of 8 in potentially underflowing
case. Ensure exception if result actually underflows.
* sysdeps/ieee754/ldbl-128ibm/s_erfl.c: Include <float.h>.
(efx8): Remove variable.
(__erfl): Scale by 16 instead of 8 in potentially underflowing
case. Ensure exception if result actually underflows.
* sysdeps/ieee754/ldbl-96/s_erfl.c: Include <float.h>.
(efx8): Remove variable.
(__erfl): Scale by 16 instead of 8 in potentially underflowing
case. Ensure exception if result actually underflows.
* math/auto-libm-test-in: Add more tests of erf.
* math/auto-libm-test-out: Regenerated.
Joseph Myers
Richard Henderson
Ulrich Drepper