Chris Lattner <clattner@apple.com> writes:
On Aug 24, 2007, at 8:02 AM, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
Permitting this extension continues the preexisting behaviour,
and it
helps programmers and helps existing code. Who does it hurt to
permit
this extension? Who does it help to forbid this extension?
Aren't builtins the designated way to access processor-specific
features like this? Why does there have to be C operators for
obscure features like this?
A fair question, but we've already decided to support vector + vector
and such operations, and we've decided that that is one valid way to
generate vector instructions. That decision may itself have been a
mistake. But once we accept that decision, then, given that we know
that the processor supports bitwise-or on floating point values, using
a instruction different from that for bitwise-or on integer values,
then it is fair to ask why we don't support vector | vector for
floating point vectors.