AVX version of the SSE routines about graphics32 HOT 4 OPEN

Besides that, AVX provides 256-bit YMM registers, and there have been released processors to the market that support AVX-512 with ZMM registers, which are really cool! We may think on how can we use these features for the Graphics32 library. The AVX-512 instructions are available on Skylake-X Core i7 and i9 models, which are quite affordable, as well as on more expensive Intel's Xeon Phi x200 (Knights Landing), which was released more than a year ago.

from graphics32.

At the moment I see at least two scenarios about how to include support for AVX.

Either some contributor does the adaptions in a fork (I'm willing to review and accept the pull request if it's proven to work reliable) or someone sponsors the development (to buy a recent computer with AVX-512 to get this included as well).

As far as I can see it the changes might take about 1-2 weeks of work, especially if it should get tested in many scenarios (especially older compilers, older computers etc.). In particular since AVX-512 <> AVX-512 nowadays (the supported features vary from processor to processor) it can get tricky to support all possible combinations.

from graphics32.

We have managed to get an i9 processor to test the AVX-512 instructions.

The AVX-512 is relatively new and, probably, in future, will be equipped only on most expensive processors.

As about AVX, it is more or less ubiquitous, equipped on all Intel processors except the cheapest Celeron and Pentium.

As about the different kinds, there are mostly 3 kinds of instructions:

1. AVX
2. AVX2
3. AVX-512

As about the differences between AVX and AVX2 - they are not that significant. Mainly, processors that only have AVX but not AVX2 require an 'vzeroupper' instruction before and after AVX code, since Delphi uses legacy SSE, especially under 64-bit, and without 'vzeroupper' there will be huge transition penalties.

AVX-2 and AVX-512, to the contrary, don't have such huge penalties, and 'vzeroupper' is not neede or may even slow things down.

from graphics32.

It's better to use NASM, not the built-in Delphi assembler since it doesn't support AVX. I've done, for example, AVX, AVX2 and AVX-512 support in NASM for a FastMM4 fork: https://github.com/maximmasiutin/FastMM4-AVX

from graphics32.