| Re: Dual Core Apple "MacBook", and RSI's Mac Intel plans [message #46968 is a reply to message #46940] |
Fri, 13 January 2006 09:56   |
JD Smith
Messages: 850
Registered: December 1999
|
Senior Member |
|
|
On Fri, 13 Jan 2006 15:55:32 +0000, Ricardo Bugalho wrote:
> Hello,
> a couple of points, depending on your interest: - Mac OS X for Intel won't
> emulate Altivec. So, if IDL makes any use of it, IDL might not run. OTOH,
> unlike SSE, Altivec never supported double precision so it's likely IDL
> won't use it. - If you don't care about Mac OS X and just want Apple's
> tradicional quality in laptops, you might be able to install Linux on it.
It turns out IDL does use a small bit of Altivec on a very few basic
operations. I had thought it used none, but was corrected. So this
means that IDL likely will *not* run under Rosetta (the new
on-they-fly PPC->Intel translator). The main question is, does IDL
run on a G3 processor? It certainly used to, back in the day, so it
probably still does, which means when Rosetta tells IDL it is a G3, it
may well fall back on some slower code and not choke. SSE is another
kettle of fish. In a year's time, probably well over 75% of IDL's
user base will be running on the same processor architecture.
Thinking about using SSE/SIMD is probably a good idea (and they are).
JD
|
|
|
|
comp.lang.idl-pvwave archive
Members
Search
Help
Login
Home
