On Sun, 17 Feb 2002, Billy Biggs wrote:

> On 18 Feb 2002, Bob Ham wrote:
>
> > Not really.  How are plugins different from programs in this respect?  I
> > don't think any OS says to programs "do you use SSE instructions?  no?
> > I'll not run you then."  Instead, programs (or, more usually, build
> > systems) say "does this machine support SSE instructions?  no?  I'll not
> > execute/build them then."
>
>   It really should be the program that detects and not the build
> system. :)  It would be very bad if a package maintainer didn't also build
> the SSE2 version of a function because their machine was a P3.
>
>   There's lots of code floating around to detect cpu type in the
> code.  See mm_accel() and friends, and ask [EMAIL PROTECTED] for his
> work on speciallib.
>
>   Plugins shouldn't be any different than programs, they can just as
> easily determine CPU type.

In fact, LADSPA plugins even have a proper place for the check:
the ladspa_descriptor() function, where it can set up the descriptor
according to the host CPU type.

Btw. one point to raise is that a plugin in _no_ case should use
other than plain i386 instructions if no detection is available, and
in the latter case always includes a i386 version for fallback (all
of course assuming x86 CPU type). Otherwise a binary distributed
plugin may cause crashes on low-end machines.

Richard.

--
Richard Guenther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
WWW: http://www.tat.physik.uni-tuebingen.de/~rguenth/
The GLAME Project: http://www.glame.de/

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