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Re: Vector Extensions in GCC
- To: gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org
- Subject: Re: Vector Extensions in GCC
- From: <kumar at chaos dot ph dot utexas dot edu>
- Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 23:39:41 -0500 (CDT)
1. As far as the copyright is concerned. Motorola did sign a future
assignment back in August of 1993 for gcc. I have a copy of it sent to me
by Brian Youmans at FSF. The 68k/88k references are in Schedule A not in
the actual assignment (it looks like the standard assignment from that
point in time).
2. Providing support for the Altivec Programming Model: Should gcc in
general provide support for extensions that 3rd parties support for a
given architecture. Altivec is just one example of this problem. All PPC
3rd party commerical compilers (Diab, MetroWerks, Green Hills,
Metaware) provide support for the AltiVec model as defined by
Motorola. While it can be argued that there are alot of things bad about
the model, should gcc at least support it to allow people using one
compiler to move to another?
If gcc decides to provide a more generic programming model that would be
great. I just have to wonder what users of the current AltiVec model are
going to feel about having to write different code if they want to use gcc
vs. another compiler.
- kumar gala