Alistair Tucker wrote: > I have read that Core2's specialised vector processor (SSE) > runs at fully twice the speed of the Core's. Presumably that > means that an array-centric application like J will run twice > as fast?
Unlikely. SSE's optimizations work around bandwidth limitations in the CPU (such as would hit you in the context of large arrays) in a fashion which is most useful when dealing with small fix-sized arrays. SSE would probably be useful in the context of some of J's "special code" -- special case algorithms which take advantage of the restrictions implied by certain sequences of operations. But I doubt very much that SSE would be much use for J's core operations. On top of that, SSE does not work on all PCs. This means that if SSE were used, we'd either see a different executable which supports SSE, or J would be larger (as it would need to incorporate an additional non-SSE implementation of every routine which supports SSE). Finally, if the ISI folks had gone to the effort of providing "special SSE" code, I think it would be documented in the release notes. -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
