On 6/2/2015 4:08 PM, Manu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
I'll wear responsibility for this, but std.simd is proving really hard for me to finish. I think in order to get something in there to start with, I need to reduce the scope to the simplest bits, get them in, then build outwards. It's fairly large to cover everything I think is important, and there's a few tools missing still; I can't finish without some way to know the SIMD flags fed to the compiler from the command line (some standard versions?), and it's also difficult to resolve without forceinline of some sort. I've reached situations where the compiler(/s) just don't do what I want it to. Also, I think the stack of simd function influence the compilers inline heuristics, and even thought the compiler decides to inline simd functions, presence of many of them in an outer function seems to reduce the probability that the outer function will be inlined as it should. forceinline needs to be a hard statement to the compiler, and ideally, a forceinline call tree shouldn't improperly influence the compilers inline decisions for outer functions.
I suggest not worrying about forceinline for the moment, and just write the code as if it existed.
As an aside, I need a test environment for each compiler, targetting x86, x64 and arm at least, where I can submit some code, and have it run the unittests on a matrix of appropriate targets. (ideally PPC and MIPS would also be included, so they can influence design decisions.) Does any such test system exist? A web service to provide this would be invaluable... I don't have all those systems available to me.
Just make it work on the machine you have, and prove it out on that machine. Then worry about porting it.
