More Front End Vector Support

[Walter Bright]

On 7/5/2012 12:55 AM, Iain Buclaw wrote:
> 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.

I don't think D should do emulation - it should give a compiler error on vector 
sizes and operations that are not supported.

The reason is the user may not expect the (very) slow emulation, and gets no 
indication of when it happens. By giving a compiler error on them, the user has 
the opportunity to decide what to do about it.

After all, the only reason he is even using vector ops is for performance.