Re: [linux-audio-dev] MMX, SSE, SSE2, 3DNOW

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Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] MMX, SSE, SSE2, 3DNOW
From: David Burrows (snadge_AT_ugh.net.au)
Date: Mon Feb 18 2002 - 03:58:44 EET


On 17 Feb 2002, Alexander Ehlert wrote:

> On Sun, 2002-02-17 at 20:52, Jussi Laako wrote:
>
> > Just use cpuid instruction and switch to correct code block accordingly.
>
> Ok, sure, we all know how to do that, but LADSPA doesn't have any
> knowledge about this things yet, you can't query the plugin whether it
> wants to use SSE, MMX, 3DNOW, ..., whatever. I'm talking about querying
> the plugin at runtime and then the hosts should be able to check somehow
> if it can execute the plugin or not. So we have to set some flags in the
> plugin.
>
Does it matter if the plugin chooses to use SSE, MMX, 3DNOW or whatever?
Surely the plugin can detect whether it has the hardware to support such
features before causing any problems and default to a vanilla x86 version
(or whatever the safest option is).

Wouldn't the best bet be to do a similiar thing to what the
distributed.net client does and autodetect the fastest code block, plus
giving you the option to manually override the automatic detection (which
usually works flawlessly).

Are you talking about a situation where plugins are transferred between
hosts of possibly different CPU type? It makes sense to me to just
execute the plugin anyway, and code the plugin in such a way that it quits
with an error if SSE/MMX/whatever is required and doesn't exist. A
cleaner solution would be to run a vanilla x86 version in its absence.

Regards,

David.

> Cheers, Alex
>


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