Yeah. The problem with them is that using double-double based methods gives you 104 bits of precision that works with vectorization (and therefore is faster than x87).

I assume double-double would be the emulated __float128 type in GCC (or hand written equivalent)? Can GCC vectorize it or it needs to be done by hand?

__float128 is emulated quad-precision, I think.

Not exactly, the mantissa is increased, but the exponent is the same as standard double precision, so it is not an IEEE quad.

You're right, I didn't know that. In a quick "long double" vs "double" microbenchmark, I see a negligible penalty for additions and comparisons, and 37% penalty when multiplications are involved.