CPUInfo: AltiVec

Hello !

A question about CPUinfo:

What is AltiVec ?!?!

CU

The PowerPC SIMD extension.

//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate

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http://olofson.nethttp://www.reologica.se —On Saturday 24 January 2004 09.06, Torsten Giebl wrote:

Hello !

A question about CPUinfo:

What is AltiVec ?!?!

orsten Giebl (2004-01-24 09:06):

Hello !
A question about CPUinfo:
What is AltiVec ?!?!
AltiVec is a hardwarebased Vector Engine / SIMD (Single Instruction
Multiple Data) Unit.

Tools like GUI Frameworks and Photoshop or Illustrator or CuBase and DSP
applications can take a huge advantage of AltiVec.

AltiVec is partial compareable to (MMX+MMX2 + SSE/SSE2)

AltiVec Core Units are build into Motorola G4 and G4+ chips which target
to deliver high performance at zero fan cooling and low power, as well
as in IBM’s PPC 9xx series (recently known as apples G5 to the public
world; maybe IBM will also build in Altivec units in its old G3 line
(that would be mostly like a g4 then), but this is just a rumor;
jfyi - apple calles AltiVec Velocity Engine (marketing issues I guess))

http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/techlib/techlib.nsf/techdocs/FBFA164F824370F987256D6A006F424D/$file/altivec_pem.d20030710.pdf
http://e-www.motorola.com/files/32bit/doc/fact_sheet/ALTIVECFACT.pdf

I am no hardcore programmer, still I hope that helped you out.–
regards

ionas