[Openexr-devel] Processing in 'half' float

[Luc-Eric Rousseau]

If I'm not mistaken, the c++ class 'half' relies on converting to and from 
32-bit float to provide mathematical operators.  

Is it reasonable to consider refactoring existing c++ image processing code 
written for 32-bit floats to work in 'half'?  What I'm looking for is saving 
RAM and avoid converting images for processing for cases like blurs and effects 
more complex than a per-channel look-up-table can handle.

Is anyone doing something like this, or is the performance cost too high?  

Alternatively, are there fast software-only /,*,+,-, operators implementation 
available for 'half' that won't go through 32-bit float?