G4 Altivec - OS4 support?

[jd997uk]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Altivec just a fancy name for the maths processor in the MPU? If so, then Altivec is to PPC what the 68881 FPU was to the 68000.

Correct, but hugely more powerful. Any program that uses Altivec FP calculations is going to benefit big time (IIRC, some Apple apps have certain operations speeded up by 10 times) so any forthcoming OS4/Application updates are sure to take advantage of it.
Also, the G4's are Multi-processor aware, so when (not if ;-)  ) OS4 becomes able to take advantage of that as well, applications will again be able to take advantage of that speed increase.

-john

[jd997uk]

@Rogue

Altivec support is planned, most likely for 4.1, possibly earlier.

Happy New Year Hans-Jörg, good to hear you posting this outside of the OS4 ML. Hopefully it will stop any DIS-information.****

The new gcc 3.2 already has support for it, but since we only have 3.2 as a cross compiler and not as a native version yet, I can't say for sure.

Are you working on a fix for this?

(Having said that, I *do* have a G4 in my AmigaOne, so...)

Now, now. Flashy talk like that will not win you any more friends you know.  :-D

Regards

-john

ps: **** (too late!) do NOT (under any circumstances) go over to Ann.lu ATM. Rumor is you are currently out of work!   :-P  :-P

[jd997uk]

@Mips_proc

IIRC, memory protection is in place, although _only_ for apps written specifically for OS4.
You will have to trawl trawl through the OS4 ML and read Rogue's posts to get the _real_ info though. He has gone into quite specific details as to how it works.

-john