Will floating point operations on the JVM give the same results on all platforms?

Question

I\'m using Java in an application running on multiple machines, and all machines need to get the same results for mathematical operations. Is it safe to use Java\'s floating poi

Answer 1

Not in general, no. However, you can use strictfp expressions:

Within an FP-strict expression, all intermediate values must be elements of the float value set or the double value set, implying that the results of all FP-strict expressions must be those predicted by IEEE 754 arithmetic on operands represented using single and double formats.

Within an expression that is not FP-strict, some leeway is granted for an implementation to use an extended exponent range to represent intermediate results; the net effect, roughly speaking, is that a calculation might produce "the correct answer" in situations where exclusive use of the float value set or double value set might result in overflow or underflow.