Mesa Considers Raising CPU Support Baseline

[mangeek]

Big gains can be made by rewriting certain functions in inline assembly using newer instructions.

I think that's what they're talking about. Raising the baseline so they can write parts of the code itself for modern SIMD instead of depending on compiler intrinsics, auto-vectorization, or multiple blocks of code to do the same thing.

[CochainComplex]

To be fair, Microsoft also enabled SSE2 on Wndows 7 through security update in one kernel component so it has been bluescreening for years if you have 32bit without SSE2. Very few people cared.

well...on the other hand a lot of Windowsusers dont even know about such issues....considering that the majority thinks that pcs kinda "wear out" when they age. If a bluescreen pops up usually that means to them the pc is over its zenith and is "just old".

[DanL]

<more inanity>

Fsck you.

[TemplarGR]

Just curious: what do you mean by "you people"?

People who want bleeding edge software that has stopped introducing new features for their hardware many years ago to keep supporting their hardware.

[Azrael5]

Who uses legacy hardware has to use legacy operating systems. The newest hardware cannot be penalized by the anachronism. SSE2 is 20 years old nowadays, and we are debating if a software must be based or not on SSE2. It's stupid enough. The hardware based on early sse2 costs 20$$$, in some cases it is also dismissed and free. Mesa could be integrate also up to sse4.x standard. Assumed that the best solution is the flexibility way got by a preliminary test of the hardware specification in order to apply the best solution for each specific hardware system.

[skeevy420]

There goes another useless phrase, meanwhile there are people who are more than happy to define "old hardware" upwards into R600, RadeonSI, Sandy Bridge, Broadwell, even anything pre-Ryzen-class hardware levels.

Those of us who are using blisteringly old ancient Intel 8080(/sarc) hardware see these comments being made, I don't know why those of you using nebulously useless phrases never see it.

If SSE2 max isn't "old hardware" then I don't know what is. That's what the article is talking about.

Personally, I think anything before AVX is old hardware. Doesn't mean that I don't see uses for older hardware. I just replaced my old hardware because it died, not because I wanted to. It was perfectly capable for everything except keeping up with the Jones's (Michael's benchmarks and new games).

But on a performance per watt and efficiency standpoint 32mn and up stuff should be considered old.

[MadeUpName]

Who uses legacy hardware has to use legacy operating systems. The newest hardware cannot be penalized by the anachronism. SSE2 is 20 years old nowadays, and we are debating if a software must be based or not on SSE2. It's stupid enough. The hardware based on early sse2 costs 20$$$, in some cases it is also dismissed and free. Mesa could be integrate also up to sse4.x standard. Assumed that the best solution is the flexibility way got by a preliminary test of the hardware specification in order to apply the best solution for each specific hardware system.

You know they currently sell hardware that doesn't support SSE4 right? Or are you a believer that Linux is only for people with bleeding edge gaming rigs?

[hotaru]

Personally, I think anything before AVX is old hardware.

a CPU that just launched this month is old hardware?

[skeevy420]

a CPU that just launched this month is old hardware?

That's obsolete by design and shouldn't even exist. Shame on Intel.

I feel for all the people buying them for budget rigs not knowing any better.

[angrypie]

That's obsolete by design and shouldn't even exist. Shame on Intel.

I feel for all the people buying them for budget rigs not knowing any better.

Nobody but rabid Intel fanboys would recommend this for a custom build. The majority of those CPUs will go to OEMs.

For fuck's sake, an Excavator CPU from 2016 has AVX2. Let's hope Alder Lake Pentiums aren't that useless (lulz).