On Wed, Mar 11, 2026 at 1:03 PM Ralf Gommers via NumPy-Discussion <numpy-discussion@python.org> wrote:
On Wed, Mar 11, 2026 at 10:58 AM matti picus via NumPy-Discussion <numpy-discussion@python.org> wrote:
I do like the idea of having a precise/fast toggle. Until we can develop one, I think we should prefer precise. So we should revert and document somewhere that float16 (and the soon-to-be-incoming bfloat16) are, in NumPy, container types, and that all the math for them is done as float16.
You meant `float32` here. And yes, I agree. Having a few code paths use platform/CPU-dependent instructions like AVX512-xxx ones, and as a result having a small subset of the NumPy API have different accuracy/speed trade-offs seems not all that useful to almost all users. And makes it harder to build up a mental model of what NumPy is actually doing.
Cheers, Ralf
Ahh, yes sorry. The last word should have been "float32". Matti