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I agree. I still hesitate to ship code that requires even AVX1, even though it was first introduced in 2011(!). AVX512 really improves the instruction set. Not

I agree. I still hesitate to ship code that requires even AVX1, even though it was first introduced in 2011(!). AVX512 really improves the instruction set. Not just from masking but from some really big holes filled in terms of instructions available that AVX2 doesn't have a good solution for. At the same time I also DO have plenty of code that could definitely use the compute throughput improvement of 512 bit vectors. But it's definitely a more niche usage. You have to at least nominally satisfy that you: 1) Benefit from 2x the ALU throughput 2) Live mostly in the cache 3) Are not worth running on the GPU instead.

Const-me 2y ago
It depends on the product and the market. I’ve been shipping software that requires AVX2 and FMA3 because it is a professional CAM/CAE application. Our users typically don’t use sub-$100 Intel processors like Pentium and Celeron. The key is communication, you need to make sure users are aware of the hardware requirements before they buy. Another example, in the server market, you can almost always count on having at least AVX2 support because most servers today are cloud-based. For people running these cloud services, power efficiency is crucial due to the high cost of electricity, so they tend to replace old hardware regularly. On the other hand, for desktop software aimed at a broad audience, there are valid reasons to hesitate before shipping code that requires AVX1.