Metafix Files

Metafix README

Metafix is an experimental library intended to test certain
next-generation techniques in code-path optimization through type
analysis. If successful, these techniques are intended to be used in a
much more complex library intended for high-performance calculation of
the 3D physical and geometric properties required by simulations.

Because of the complexity of the type calculation techniques involved,
metafix is targetted for the not-yet-released C++0x standard, and will
not be usable on systems that do not supply the auto keyword.

As a test bed, metafix is intended to use these techniques in a much
simpler domain -- that of fixed-point math. Metafix will allow both
runtime and compile-time calculation with fixed-point values, and will
be able to track which variables must logically have singular values
(such as 1 or 0) and short-circuit calculations accordingly.

The runtime portion of metafix is intended to provide calculations
between fixed and non-fixed types, as well as between fixed-point
types of different sizes, signedness, and radix point positions. Where
hardware acceleration exists for these calculations, metafix is
intended to make automatic use of these.

Metafix is intended to be usable on devices that lack floating-point
match libraries, but will be able to convert values to and from
floating-point when it is available.

Currently, metafix is still in the preliminary design stages and does
little more than define some primitive input and output operations. It
can't even add yet, but the Open Source mantra is to release early and
release often, so this infant is being pushed out the door at the
first opportunity.