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7aac169e18
the second step of approximating cbrt(x). It turns out to be neither very magic not nor very good. It is just the (2,2) Pade approximation to 1/cbrt(r) at r = 1, arranged in a strange way to use fewer operations at a cost of replacing 4 multiplications by 1 division, which is an especially bad tradeoff on machines where some of the multiplications can be done in parallel. A Remez rational approximation would give at least 2 more bits of accuracy, but the (2,2) Pade approximation already gives 6 more bits than needed. (Changed the comment which essentially says that it gives 3 more bits.) Lower order Pade approximations are not quite accurate enough for double precision but are plenty for float precision. A lower order Remez rational approximation might be enough for double precision too. However, rational approximations inherently require an extra division, and polynomial approximations work well for 1/cbrt(r) at r = 1, so I plan to switch to using the latter. There are some technical complications that tend to cost a division in another way. |
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