[GEM-dev] altivec on linux/PPC

[cgc at humboldtblvd.com]

I think GCC on linux will compile Altivec code - although it might require you
do add some libs to your Linux install.  The __VEC__ define should be recognized
by GCC otherwise just do -D__VEC__ to get that.  I'm not writing any Altivec
code that is OSX specific that I'm aware of at the moment.  That being said, I
also have no intention of ever checking the code on PPC Linux either - frankly I
no longer see the point of PPC Linux, especially for audio and video.

One thing to realize is that many of the performance enhancements of GEM on OSX
are related to Apple's tweaks to QT and GL and you will not get these on Linux.
 I would expect a significant performance disparity between the two OSes as
Linux loses the Altivec decompression routines from QT, direct DMA texture
uploads, non-power-of-two textures and the general vector routines like memcpy
and bzero that use Altivec and PPC ASM.  I can't really say what the state of
video drivers on PPC Linux is right now, but I'm pretty sure that Nvidia doesn't
offer binaries for their chips and ATI support is a question mark as to what
features are offered (although 3D acceleration is there).

cgc

Quoting "B. Bogart" <ben at ekran.org>:

> Hey all,
> 
> I just had the idea that it would be nice if linux/Gem for PPC used the
> same
> altivec acceleration as the OSX version.
> 
> How hard would it be to put this in the build system?
> 
> Just thinking out loud...
> 
> Ben
> 
> 
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