From owner-freebsd-current Wed Feb 26 18:51:58 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id ABFDF37B401 for ; Wed, 26 Feb 2003 18:51:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from web40310.mail.yahoo.com (web40310.mail.yahoo.com [66.218.78.89]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 07B5643FCB for ; Wed, 26 Feb 2003 18:51:55 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from victorysoldier@yahoo.com) Message-ID: <20030227025155.61529.qmail@web40310.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [194.44.216.117] by web40310.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Wed, 26 Feb 2003 18:51:55 PST Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 18:51:55 -0800 (PST) From: Rhett Monteg Hollander Reply-To: alasir@supereva.it Subject: Re: -O2 considered harmful To: current@freebsd.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Nuno Teixeira wrote: > > Hi, > > Just a little question: > > Does -march=k6-2 implies -m3dnow? Or -march=pentiumpro implies -mmmx? Pentium Pro doesn't support MMX; -march=pentiumpro (aka -march=i686) enables compiling with main i686 instruction set, no MMX\SSE or whatever. > > I always thought that when I use -march it will enable other > porcessor specific optimizations like mmx and 3dnow (if available). No way. Besides, only a dozen of open-source UNIX applications can really profit from MMX, so it's absurd to use -mmmx for day-by-day use. To be correct, MMX is only useful for real-time video\audio processing. A little example: consider some 16-bit pixel set that you need to increase brightness, i.e. to add some value to every pixel. You can load a word into integer register, process, and store. You can also load a quadword of four 16-bit values into MMX register which is mapped onto FPU register, process them at once, and store. Indeed to be faster. Enabling MMX usually results in about 50% performance increase for true CISC processors like P-MMX, and about 20% for PII and up. --- Regards, Rhett __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more http://taxes.yahoo.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message