3 ms·
Given that games tend to be deployed on a wide range of computers, it's hard for them to use newer x86 extensions (e.g. AVX), while most scientific computing ap
by andrioni 10y ago
Given that games tend to be deployed on a wide range of computers, it's hard for them to use newer x86 extensions (e.g. AVX), while most scientific computing applications tend to be compiled for a specific machine. To get to see the larger improvements, you must use the newer instructions and registers, like you can see in BLAS benchmarks[1].
[1]: https://www.bountysource.com/teams/openblas/fundraiser https://www.bountysource.com/teams/openblas/fundraiser
- daemin 10y agoYep, at my old job we still had to support Windows XP 32 bit for the game client (internal tools were Windows 7 64 bit) as so many people were still playing on systems. I don't remember if we could use SSE2 or what the minimum was in that regard.
- alfalfasprout 10y agoSome compilers support multiple codepaths depending on the supported instruction set. Intel's C++ compiler makes this easy, for instance.