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> The project has 2000+ direct contributors and even more indirect contributors on its mailing lists. I'm one of them, so please just believe me instead of try

> The project has 2000+ direct contributors and even more indirect contributors on its mailing lists. I'm one of them, so please just believe me instead of trying to correct me ;) It's an ongoing problem the project talks about that there aren't enough newcomers ready to write more SIMD code with good enough quality. > Should they be showering ffmpeg et al. with praise or something? The top reply is "just do this other thing that the article said was unworkable", so not doing that would be a start. Though, the article could've spent some more time explaining why intrinsics don't work well enough. > but hardly anyone else can justify doing that Other people mostly only target one CPU architecture as they're less important, but they also get paid and ffmpeg developers largely didn't. (These days more of them do, but those people are contributing security work more than performance work I think.) It's similar to how x264 was better than every commercial competitor while working for free, simply because they took more time to think about what they were doing.

dzaima 3y ago
If ffmpeg can't pull together enough good SIMD developers from its thousands of contributors, then most projects won't be able to get any. Having a problem of "not enough" is already miles better the problem of "having none".
SubjectToChange 3y ago
I'm one of them, so please just believe me instead of trying to correct me ;)… No you aren’t. Or rather, there’s absolutely no reason for me to believe you are. It's an ongoing problem the project talks about that there aren't enough newcomers ready to write more SIMD code with good enough quality. Good programmers are in short supply across the entire industry. Like anything else it’s just a matter of practice. The top reply is "just do this other thing that the article said was unworkable", so not doing that would be a start. A) Get a thicker skin. It’s not the end of the world when people leave comments related to the topic at hand. B) x86inc.asm isn’t a particularly interesting approach to programming assembly. Other people mostly only target one CPU architecture as they're less important,… If hardware portability is a goal then handwritten assembly is even more wasteful. It's similar to how x264 was better than every commercial competitor while working for free, simply because they took more time to think about what they were doing. A lot of it simply comes down to sheer man hours and the quantity/quality of bug reports. No 4d chess, no great geniuses, just “good enough” persistence. Anyway, the problem with handwriting assembly is that such programs are trivial in their complexity and/or given unusually strong guarantees.

dzaima 3y ago

If ffmpeg can't pull together enough good SIMD developers from its thousands of contributors, then most projects won't be able to get any. Having a problem of "not enough" is already miles better the problem of "having none".

SubjectToChange 3y ago

I'm one of them, so please just believe me instead of trying to correct me ;)… No you aren’t. Or rather, there’s absolutely no reason for me to believe you are. It's an ongoing problem the project talks about that there aren't enough newcomers ready to write more SIMD code with good enough quality. Good programmers are in short supply across the entire industry. Like anything else it’s just a matter of practice. The top reply is "just do this other thing that the article said was unworkable", so not doing that would be a start. A) Get a thicker skin. It’s not the end of the world when people leave comments related to the topic at hand. B) x86inc.asm isn’t a particularly interesting approach to programming assembly. Other people mostly only target one CPU architecture as they're less important,… If hardware portability is a goal then handwritten assembly is even more wasteful. It's similar to how x264 was better than every commercial competitor while working for free, simply because they took more time to think about what they were doing. A lot of it simply comes down to sheer man hours and the quantity/quality of bug reports. No 4d chess, no great geniuses, just “good enough” persistence. Anyway, the problem with handwriting assembly is that such programs are trivial in their complexity and/or given unusually strong guarantees.