SIMD support...

[Manu]

On 13 January 2012 08:34, Norbert Nemec <Norbert at nemec-online.de> wrote:

> On 12.01.2012 23:10, Peter Alexander wrote:
>
>> On 12/01/12 8:13 PM, Norbert Nemec wrote:
>>
>>> Considering these hardware details of the SSE architecture alone, I fear
>>> that portable low-level support for SIMD is very hard to achieve. If you
>>> want to offer access to the raw power of each architecture, it might be
>>> simpler to have machine-specific language extensions for SIMD and leave
>>> the portability for a wrapper library with a common front-end and
>>> various back-ends for the different architectures.
>>>
>>
>> You are right, but don't forget that the same is true for instructions
>> already in the language. For example, (1 << x) is a very slow operation
>> on PPUs (it's micro-coded).
>>
>> It's simply not possible to be portable and achieve maximum performance
>> for any language features, not just vectors. Algorithms must be tuned
>> for specific architectures in version statements. However, you can get a
>> decent baseline by providing the lowest common denominator in
>> functionality. This v128 type (or whatever it will be called) does that.
>>
>
> Actually, my essential message is: The single v128 is too simplistic for
> the SSE architecture. You actually need different types because the
> compiler needs to know what type is stored in any given register to be able
> to move it around.
>

This has already been concluded some days back, the language has a quite of
types, just like GCC.
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