[svlug] 3dNow Instructions and Linux

[Charles Peterman]

The 3dNow instructions are quite useful for things other than depicting
geigeresque alien hordes getting their innards made into outards.  SIMD
(single instruction, multiple data), greatly increase the speed of vector
calculations.  These are useful in my area of interest, cryptographic
analysis. Unfortunately, on the OS whose name I dare not speak, these
instructions are used only for multimedia.  I am considering a project to
write some assembly functions to expose the 3dNow instructions in as a
library to gcc.  Please note that I said as a library, not as
optimizations within the compiler.  The first is doable by a couple of
guys, the second is a later goal after we have a working library. 

Thanks to an eclectic education in Electrical Engineering and Computer
Science, I know enough about assembly programming to be clueful, enough
about compilers to be dangerous, and enough about the kernel to be
frightened.  So what I want to know is if: 

a.  This is already an ongoing project and I just completely failed 
to notice.

b.  What references (O'reilly, Addison, or otherwise)  would you consider
informative on the process for doing this?  Of course I have the 3dNow
instructions listing.

c.  Loaded question:  Would this library require kernel level support?
I know that the library will require synchronization for thread safety,
does that synchronization need to be provided to the kernel or can I just
take advantage of existing mechanisms and not have to do much kernel
hacking.


Thanks in advance,

Charles Peterman
- Off charging Windmills again.


--
echo "unsubscribe svlug" | mail majordomo at svlug.org
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ to unsubscribe
see http://www.svlug.org/mdstuff/lists.shtml for posting guidelines.