Re: Linux support for Intel MMX CPU's

Kenneth Albanowski (kjahds@kjahds.com)
Mon, 19 Aug 1996 05:02:57 -0400 (EDT)


On Fri, 16 Aug 1996, Johan Myréen wrote:

> On Fri, 16 Aug 1996, Michael Mansour wrote:
>
> > During 1997, MMX will be released by Intel with their CPU's, I am
> > wondering whether Linux will be able to take advantage of these advanced
> > multimedia capabilities at chip level? Will it be kernel support or app
> > support or both?
>
> The kernel itself does not need multimedia capabilities, but I'm sure some
> kernel hacker with a sufficiently twisted mind (especially Linus himself)
> can come up with some interesting uses for the new instructions in the
> kernel code :-)

MMX stands more for Matrix Math Extensions then it does for Multimedia --
or so I'm lead to believe. In any case, while the kernel might not be able
to make use of these things, presumably libm (or more advanced math
libraries) would be able to make use of it.

--
Kenneth Albanowski (kjahds@kjahds.com, CIS: 70705,126)