Floating point differences between Java 1.5 and Java 6

Hi all.

One of our unit tests started failing on introduction of Java 6, and it turns out that the operations in question are floating point operations. We're performing some floating point math on pixel values for an image, and depending on the JRE version, a different result is generated.

In addition to this, the floating point maths runs around 100 times faster under Java 6. I'm not exaggerating -- the Java 1.5 version runs in 2.5 seconds on average, and the Java 6 version runs in 25 milliseconds on average.

I can't see anything explicitly in the release notes which says that floating point has significantly changed, but has anyone else noticed similar occurrences since the upgrade?

[722 byte] By [trejkaza] at [2007-11-26 13:14:03]