Re: Linux support for Intel MMX CPU's

Gaspy Silverleaf (dragon@ballistic.com)
Wed, 21 Aug 1996 22:44:00 -0500

I believe we're going to have problems with asm written towards MMX and
making use of the fpu registers, especially if they miss-use the registers.
But it might be helpful to have a library based and optimized for MMX??
Any Volunteers?? :)

----------
> From: Bernd Eckenfels <ecki@inka.de>
> To: submit-linux-dev-kernel@ratatosk.yggdrasil.com
> Subject: Re: Linux support for Intel MMX CPU's
> Date: mardi 20 août 1996 14:35
>
> Michel LESPINASSE <walken@via.ecp.fr> wrote:
> : >From what I've read on the MMX documentations (available at
> : http://www.intel.com/pc-supp/multimed/mmx/prm.htm), and from what I've
> : been told by some programmers that have access to the current versions
of
> : this chip, the OS does not have to be aware of the MMX to let the
> : applications use it. The MMX registers are aliased on the FP stack,
> : so any context-switching routine that is able to save the FPU state,
will
> : be able to use the MMX state.
>
> The problem with this is, that the FPU is not available in the
Usercontext
> which uses MMX commands. The question is, if this will work with current
> libc/ctr0.o stuff.
>
> Greetings
> Bernd
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