Hi, And how would you integrate AltiVec for Power-PC? Into the >plugin interface< or into the >plugins<?
- Robert On Monday 18 February 2002 19:32, Bob Colwell wrote: > "wacky sub-architectures?" I beg to differ. :-) > > There are really only 4, and I think I can argue them down to two, at > least for Intel boxes. > > In the beginning was the Intel 386, and its pipelined younger brother > the 486. And between Intel and AMD, a lot of those chips got sold and > most of the world loved them for it. > > Then came the Pentium, and with its 2nd generation, the MMX integer > SIMD instructions. Pentium II also included MMX. > > Next came the Pentium III, which had MMX and the single > precision version of MMX, called SSE. I'm leaving out the Pentium Pro > because those chips shipped mainly into servers. > > Then came the Pentium 4, with MMX, SSE, and the double-precision version > of SSE, called SSE2. > > This progression occurred because of the algorithm being followed at > Intel: put in whatever fits, and make sure the memory bandwidth to > support it is there. > > I'll be really surprised if enough interesting sound work was being > done on 386's and 486's that we need to even remember those. In fact, > are there really enough Pentium boxes remaining in the field to care > about them and their MMX-only capability? > > I'm not so sure about Pentium II machines, which were shipped as high > as 400 MHz, and might be still fast enough and widely enough used that > we still care about them in this context. > > To look at all this another way, what's the problem if we restrict our > attention here to just Pentium III and newer designs? If the new > instruction sets are enough of a win to ever use, then they're also > enough of a win to entice people to buy up. They have to, sooner or > later. > > -Bob Colwell > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Steve > Harris > Sent: Monday, February 18, 2002 7:23 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] MMX, SSE, SSE2, 3DNOW > > On Sat, Feb 16, 2002 at 09:09:24 +0100, Alexander Ehlert wrote: > > Hi, > > > > AFAIK there are no flags whatsoever to indicate which processor a plugin > > might use. So if someone wants to hack a plugin that uses SSE > > instructions and someone else tries to use that on a host without SSE > > support -> crash. So wouldn't it be good to add some architecture flags, > > that could be queried by the host? > > So far, I have only distributed binaries in RPM only, which has > architecture dependencies. Actually they are wrongly labelled as i386, > they are really i686. > > I don't think the plugin should pick a code block based on some detection > code, that would make the plugins image larger, and therefore less > efficient. There are far too many wacky sub-architectures of x86's to > include SIMD instructions for all of them in one binary. > > I have plyed with multi-format binaries (see mail later today), and it is > tricky. > > I think the right thing to do is to take the same approach as with normal > libraries and binaries, and label the packages. > > - Steve
