Actually, mmx doesn't really mean anything: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMX
mplayer and the X server gain performance by using these extensions (mmx, sse, sse2). One of the reasons why X is much faster in Gentoo than in Debian. (Personal Experience, please, no flames) 2006/1/13, John Myers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > On Friday 13 January 2006 07:45, Francesco Riosa wrote: > > Tom Smith wrote: > > > Well, if they're /not/ mutually exclusive, another question that comes > > > up is... > > > > > > If a program is compiled with sse or sse2 support on a Pentium II, will > > > the program run slower than it otherwise would? (Some of the programs I > > > have are compiled and then distributed to servers with different > > > CPUs--P-IIs and P-IVs, mainly.) > > > > speaking of manually added options to CFLAGS*, not of use flags > > > > The only place where mathematics count on a server is encryption ? > > (notice the question mark) > > Mayor part of server software use integer math that are not so enhanced > > by optimizations. > > The code produced is less stable, and difficult to debug, this bring to the > > question: why take the risk ? > actually, mmx (MultiMedia eXtensions) , sse and sse2 instructions are designed > primarily for multimedia and gaming type applications, which _do_ use > floating-point math, and AFAIK, encryption is going to be all-integer too > (floating-point math is not perfectly precise) > > And, like I said earlier, if you put a program with an sse or sse2 instruction > on a PII, the program will most likely spontaneously abort when it tries to > execute the unsupported instruction. > -- > # > # electronerd, the electronerdian from electronerdia > # > > > -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
