The question is if you wouldn't be better served with double-doubles today. You get ~100 bits of mantissa AND you can still vectorize your computations.
Sure. There should be a gcc flag to make "long double" become quadruple precision.
The thing is, my first programming language was x86 assembler and the fpu was the funniest part. Spent weeks as a teenager writing almost pure 8087 code. I have a lot of emotional investment in that tiny rolling stack of extended precision floats.
You're selectively quoting me - I said it's 'legacy emulated'. It's emulated using very long-form microcode, so basically emulated in software. I didn't say it was simply 'legacy'.
I’m completely out of my depth reading through these comments so I don’t have much of value to contribute, but I do think I can gently say I think the selective quoting was harmless, but deliberate to fit the shape of a harmless joke’s setup. I don’t think there was any intent to misrepresent your more salient information.