on 12.10.2010 at 21:31 Thomas Klimpel wrote :
DE wrote:
so my question is: do you expect code writers which want their binaries work across all modern x86 processors (starting with pentium) to write plain version along with accelerated one? or will your implementation fall back to plain old say x87 when sse2 is not available so the writer could write only one version of source?
But how is this different from specifying appropriate compile options for the platforms you intent to support? Even the code generated by a compiler will only work on the processor architectures that the compiler targeted. And if you tell the compiler to target the lowest common denominator, the resulting code will be quite slow.
for example intel compiler for win32 allows to generate two versions binaries from one source: plain x86 and say sse2 which are switched at runtime depending on cpuid so the question still stands -- Pavel P.S. if you notice a grammar mistake or weird phrasing in my message please point it out