Re: PATCH: (on Alpha) emulating missing instructions

Alan Cox (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk)
Fri, 15 Oct 1999 14:06:04 +0100 (BST)


> We already have FPU emulation in kernel, and there

That should probably have been in userspace.

> exists a project to emulate MMX/3dnow!/EMMX instructions
> at http://www-sop.inria.fr/prisme/personnel/pion/progs/mmx-emu/
> Would there be any benefit if such a project were integrated
> into the kernel? Other than allowing 386's to run MMX apps
> without needing a recompile. :-)

No. The usage guidelines for MMX are explicit - you must test for the
availability and provide fallbacks. If code doesn't work on a box without
MMX and provides no option to do so then as far as the MMX programming guides
go - its broken.

Similarly the right answer for the Loki game is probably to build it with
different compiler options, not to stick some emulator in the kernel

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