Difference between revisions of "Power ISA/Vector Operations"

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The Power Architecture ISA includes a specification of vector or SIMD operations. Prior to the Power ISA, i.e. PowerPC, some of these operations were available, but defined in an external standard, called Altivec by Motorola (and then Freescale who bought them), VMX by IBM, and Velocity Engine by Apple.
 
The Power Architecture ISA includes a specification of vector or SIMD operations. Prior to the Power ISA, i.e. PowerPC, some of these operations were available, but defined in an external standard, called Altivec by Motorola (and then Freescale who bought them), VMX by IBM, and Velocity Engine by Apple.
  
The Vector operations are classified as Vector Multimedia Extension (VMX) and Vector Scalar Extension (VSX) in current versions of the Power ISA.
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The Vector operations are classified as Vector Facility and Vector Scalar Extension (VSX) in current versions of the Power ISA.
  
 
Power ISA v2.07 still refers to some instructions as VMX in its summary of changes since the previous version, but the rest of the document avoids mentioning VMX completely.
 
Power ISA v2.07 still refers to some instructions as VMX in its summary of changes since the previous version, but the rest of the document avoids mentioning VMX completely.

Revision as of 13:49, 14 March 2019

The Power Architecture ISA includes a specification of vector or SIMD operations. Prior to the Power ISA, i.e. PowerPC, some of these operations were available, but defined in an external standard, called Altivec by Motorola (and then Freescale who bought them), VMX by IBM, and Velocity Engine by Apple.

The Vector operations are classified as Vector Facility and Vector Scalar Extension (VSX) in current versions of the Power ISA.

Power ISA v2.07 still refers to some instructions as VMX in its summary of changes since the previous version, but the rest of the document avoids mentioning VMX completely.

Power ISA v3.0 no longer mentions VMX at all.

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