Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] MMX, SSE, SSE2, 3DNOW
From: Steve Harris (S.W.Harris_AT_ecs.soton.ac.uk)
Date: Tue Feb 19 2002 - 13:40:34 EET
On Mon, Feb 18, 2002 at 11:45:49 +0200, Jussi Laako wrote:
>
> Intel's compiler can generate code that autoselects best version for i586,
> i686, P3 or P4 and it works very well. So you don't have to worry about what
> kind of CPU the machine has. Anyway you can get significantly better
> performance with writing the routines by hand.
Yes, but that doesn't work with dl loaded .so's which is what LADSPA
plugins are.
I'm obviously missing something, why would anyone want to have a plugin
installed which can run on arbitrary CPU's? The only reason I can think of
is if you move the partition from one machine to another, or on an NFS
partition shared by machines with different architectures, but how many
people do that?
> And btw, there is no such compiler for 3DNow and AMD CPU's are still 3-10
> times faster on FPU (dunno about P4 with P4 code). My handwritten Enh3DNow
> code is still 10 times faster on AMD Athlon (Thunderbird) than same code
> written in C optimized by Intel's compiler running on P3 (Tualatin) at same
> clock frequency.
Yes, but the Athlon is a much better CPU than the PIII, especially with
floats. I would never buy an intel machine for myself, but work has an
intel policy and buys my machines.
- Steve
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