[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] Fast half-float to float conversion

[Reimar Döffinger]

On Wed, Jul 01, 2009 at 09:05:36AM +0200, Jimmy Christensen wrote:
> Looks more correct now, but still a very dark image. I multiplied with 2 
> and it seems to match the table lookup method. Is this correct?

Maybe, though adding a *2 is the wrong way.

> float av_int2halflt(int16_t v){
>       uint16_t nosign = v+v;
>       if (nosign>= 0xfc00) {
>           if (nosign == 0xfc00) return v>>15 ? -1.0/0.0 : 1.0/0.0;
>           else return 0.0/0.0;
>       }
>       if (nosign<  0x0400) return 0; // denormal or 0
>       return ldexp((v&0x3ff) + (1<<10) * (v>>15|1), (v>>10&0x1f)-26)*2;

You forgot a (), this will be wrong for negative values.
And instead of *2 the -26 should be -25 (this is related to the 11 -> 10
change, the value is 0x1f/2+10, rounded down).
The denormal or 0 case probably should instead of "return 0" use
"return ldexp((v&0x3ff)*(v>>15|1), 1-25);" to handle denormals.

> I would love to do such optimizations if I was able to. Right now I'm 
> just looking for some reference code which can be used to do the job 
> which is simple and not too bloated coding wise. Implementing the table 
> based is not a good solution for smaller systems, but never had these 
> systems in mind when proposing the code for half-float > float.

Even the paper you linked to has the code to do it without table:
f = ((h&0x8000)<<16) | (((h&0x7c00)+0x1C000)<<13) | ((h&0x03FF)<<13)
you'd only have to add handling of 0, denormals, NaN and Inf as far as
you need.