More Front End Vector Support

[Iain Buclaw]

On 4 July 2012 22:43, Walter Bright <newshound2 at digitalmars.com> wrote:
> On 7/4/2012 7:19 AM, Iain Buclaw wrote:
>>
>> Morning,
>>
>> I've noticed that 256bit vector support has been added to the D frontend
>> during
>> the development stages of 2.060 whilst was looking around in druntime
>> core.
>>
>>
>> https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/druntime/commit/fcc91588e89fa48b699f0efe0cdfb8c23e2bb4ae
>>
>>
>>
>> Is anyone willing to object if I raise a pull request to add 64bit Vector
>> support in the D frontend too for architectures that support? This
>> includes
>> i386/x86_64 using MMX extensions, and ARM using NEON extensions.
>>
>> Not sure how well DMD would cope with the type in it's backend though, but
>> can
>> always reject it in its backend with an error.
>
>
> 64 bit MMX extensions for x86 are, as far as I can tell, quite obsolete. The
> CPUs support those instructions for backwards compatibility, but I cannot
> see any reason for D to add new support for it.
>
>

Fair enough.  Only asked as if we do Y and Z, why not X?  GCC backend
already supported the use of __vector[N] sizes long before D support
was added, but then again only less than of a handful of architectures
actually __support__ vector operations (as I said, I think only MMX
and NEON would benefit) - the rest just slowly emulate it.


Regards
-- 
Iain Buclaw

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