The inlining experiment partitioned everything, just not along the axis it was
framed on:
inlined != FORCENOINLINE : 0 inlining is not the variable
FORCENOINLINE == op stack : 5000/5000 test-TU carve == other-TU op, always
inlined == verbatim : 4874/5000 126 differ, in the SAME TU
The test-TU carve matches the operator stack across a TU boundary perfectly and
disagrees with the verbatim inside its own TU, so neither TU nor inlining is it.
Sorting the five implementations by the one remaining difference splits them
exactly: A (GetMazeDensity) and C (verbatim) hold Blend as a compile-time
constant; B (FSdfCarveOp, a member) and both parameter versions hold it as
runtime data. A == C, B == Inl == Noi, and the groups differ. Every observation
today fits that and nothing else does.
Mechanism: under /fp:fast, folding Blend * 2.0f to the literal 4.0f enables a
contraction in SmoothStep01's 3.0f - 2.0f*x -- one rounding instead of two --
that the runtime form cannot get.
This matters beyond the bug: an op's parameters are DATA by design, which is the
entire point of the refactor, so they can never be compile-time literals again.
The ULP difference is therefore inherent and permanent for every archetype port,
and no care in transcription will remove it. That is the real reason bit-identity
is unachievable here -- the earlier /fp:fast note named the right compiler flag
for the wrong reason.
CarveConstBlend added: identical to CarveInlined except Blend is a compile-time
constant. Predicted to match the verbatim 5000/5000 and differ from the runtime
form on exactly 126.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>