No-float policy for secp256k1 #683

issue laanwj opened this issue on November 1, 2019

laanwj commented at 9:20 AM on November 1, 2019: member
I think secp256k1 needs an explicit no-floating point policy, like the Linux kernel. This means no use of float, and no double (and no half, no long double either).
- It has to be able to run in kernel context
- Boot and security processors tend to have no FP support (e.g. core 0 on the Sifive U54)
- FP hardware implementation is possibly inconsistent between platforms which is useless for cryptography
I mean for the main code; in the bench framework is fine, though with the assumption that it might be emulated and very slow.

(inspired by #658 (comment))
real-or-random cross-referenced this on Nov 1, 2019 from issue Make no-float policy explicit by real-or-random
jonasnick closed this on Nov 1, 2019
jonasnick closed this on Nov 1, 2019
elichai commented at 10:21 AM on November 1, 2019: contributor

For the record it was a hypothetical. I wasn't serious in using floats... (which we obviously should almost never use ever)
real-or-random commented at 10:24 AM on November 1, 2019: contributor

No worries :)
laanwj commented at 10:30 AM on November 1, 2019: member

For the record it was a hypothetical. I wasn't serious in using floats... (which we obviously should almost never use ever)

I know it was more or less a joke in your case!

But it's just good to have these things explicit, so developers as well as users of the library have some certainly.

Contributors