On Jun 9, 2005, at 12:16 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
Good question. I'm guessing they will be as long as it requires little
extra effort, and once people start developing stuff that uses and
depends on x86 features, like SSE3 or whatever, then PPC support will
start to fall away...
On Jun 9, 2005, at 2:49 PM, Ken Norris wrote:
Intel, however, can deliver very powerful chips in a timely manner.
Although sans Altivec, if they are fast enough and can handle the
load without overheating, they won't _need_ Altivec.
However they DO have a vector-processing unit similar to Altivec. And
Apple has a universal vector API.
From Apple's Universal Binary guidelines document:
(REALLY worth perusing, BTW:
<http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/
universal_binary/>)
Chapter 5: Preparing Vector-Based Code
"This chapter is relevant only for those developers whose
applications already directly use the AltiVec extension to the
PowerPC instruction set or who want to start writing vector-based
code. AltiVec instructions, because they are processor-specific, must
be replaced o Macintosh computers using Intel microprocessors. You
can choose from these two options:
Use the Accelerate framework. The Accelerate framework, introduced
in Mac OS X v10.3 and
expanded in v10.4, is a set of high-performance vector-accelerated
libraries. It provides a layer of abstraction that lets you access
vector-based code without needing to use vector instructions yourself
or to be concerned with the architecture of the target machine. The
system automatically invokes the appropriate instruction set.
Port AltiVec code to the Intel instruction set architecture (ISA).
The MMXTM, SSE, SSE2, and SSE3 extensions provide analogous
functionality to AltiVec. Like the AltiVec unit, these extensions are
fixed-sized SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) vector units,
capable of a high degree of parallelism. Just as for AltiVec, code
that is written to use the Intel ISA typically performs many times
faster than scalar code. "
Using the Accelerate framework is by far the better. You don't have
the option of hand-writing the code, but it will take full advantage
of hardware on both CPU platforms.
Apple learned an enormous amount during the 68K -> PPC and OS 9 -> OS
X transitions that they seem to have leveraged quite well here. Many
of the folks who I've seen quoted seem pretty sanguine about the
switchover.
The ones who are facing the most work are the holdouts still using
CodeWarrior.
--
Bruce Johnson
This is the sig who says 'Ni!'
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