On the Computation of Correctly Rounded Sums

This paper presents a study of some basic blocks needed in the design of floating-point summation algorithms. In particular, in radix-2 floating-point arithmetic, we show that among the set of the algorithms with no comparisons performing only floating-point additions/subtractions, the 2Sum algorithm introduced by Knuth is minimal, both in terms of number of operations and depth of the dependency graph. We investigate the possible use of another algorithm, Dekker´s Fast2Sum algorithm, in radix-10 arithmetic. We give methods for computing, in radix 10, the floating-point number nearest the average value of two floating-point numbers. We also prove that under reasonable conditions, an algorithm performing only round-to-nearest additions/subtractions cannot compute the round-to-nearest sum of at least three floating-point numbers. Starting from an algorithm due to Boldo and Melquiond, we also present new results about the computation of the correctly-rounded sum of three floating-point numbers. For a few of our algorithms, we assume new operations defined by the recent IEEE 754-2008 Standard are available.