This paper describes a novel way to implement the Jacobi algorithm for the
singular value decomposition of full rank matrices. It is shown that the le
ft and right singular vectors can be computed without explicit accumulation
of Jacobi rotations. Instead, the accumulated product of Jacobi rotations
is computed a posteriori as the solution of a certain well-conditioned matr
ix equation. Theoretical analysis provides tools to estimate, check and, if
necessary, to improve the accuracy of the computed decomposition. Experime
ntal results show that the new technique performs very well in practice.