On Thu, 2008-10-09 at 10:37 -0500, Matt Sealey wrote: > > Ahem, but nobody here wants AltiVec in the kernel do they?
It depends. We do use altivec in the kernel for example for RAID accelerations. The reason where we require a -real-good- reason to do it is simply because of the drawbacks. The cost of enabling altivec in the kernel can be high (especially if the user is using it) and it's not context switched for kernel code (just like the FPU) for obvious performance reasons. Thus any use of altivec in the kernel must be done within non-preemptible sections, which can cause higher latencies in preemptible kernels. Ben. _______________________________________________ Linuxppc-embedded mailing list Linuxppc-embedded@ozlabs.org https://ozlabs.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxppc-embedded
