On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 2:28 PM, Glenn Maynard <gl...@zewt.org> wrote:
> On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 4:21 PM, Boris Zbarsky <bzbar...@mit.edu> wrote: > > > On 5/29/14, 5:13 PM, Glenn Maynard wrote: > > > >> Assembly language is inherently incompatible with the Web. > >> > > > > A SIMD API, however is not. Under the hood, it can be implemented in > > terms of MMX, SSE, NEON, or just by forgetting about the SIMD bit and > > pretending like you have separate operations. In particular, you could > > have a SIMD API that desugars to plain JS as the default implementation > in > > browsers but that JITs can recognize and vectorize as they desire. This > > sort of API will happen, for sure. > > > > I doubt it, at least with performance competitive with native assembly. We > certainly shouldn't delay features while we hope for it. You don't need to hope for it. The future is already here: http://www.j15r.com/blog/2014/05/23/Box2d_2014_Update asm.js will be fast on all modern browsers before this feature would ship. As an author, I'd certainly prefer the most flexible solution that works everywhere.