Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] MMX, SSE, SSE2, 3DNOW
From: Steve Harris (S.W.Harris_AT_ecs.soton.ac.uk)
Date: Mon Feb 18 2002 - 17:23:04 EET
On Sat, Feb 16, 2002 at 09:09:24 +0100, Alexander Ehlert wrote:
> Hi,
>
> AFAIK there are no flags whatsoever to indicate which processor a plugin
> might use. So if someone wants to hack a plugin that uses SSE
> instructions and someone else tries to use that on a host without SSE
> support -> crash. So wouldn't it be good to add some architecture flags,
> that could be queried by the host?
So far, I have only distributed binaries in RPM only, which has
architecture dependencies. Actually they are wrongly labelled as i386,
they are really i686.
I don't think the plugin should pick a code block based on some detection
code, that would make the plugins image larger, and therefore less
efficient. There are far too many wacky sub-architectures of x86's to
include SIMD instructions for all of them in one binary.
I have plyed with multi-format binaries (see mail later today), and it is
tricky.
I think the right thing to do is to take the same approach as with normal
libraries and binaries, and label the packages.
- Steve
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