Testing 3dnow, sse, etc...

dryadcito · Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 3:36 am Post subject: Testing 3dnow, sse, etc...

I know that several packages won't work with flags enabling 3dnow & co, but developers of those packages are most likely working on that, and some packages could work now. Perhaps ebuild maintainers can't make tests because they have no time ( or the necessary amd64 ) but I'm sure here are people willing to help.

Could be useful if we start testing packages emerged with those use flags and report results? I'm saying this because of three reasons:

1) Does anyone know which packages won't work with them and which ones are ready? Is anyone trying each release with them on this architecture?

2)this kind of articles :

http://enterprise.linux.com/enterprise/05/06/09/1413209.shtml?tid=121

taken from

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-196967.html

and others that make clear 3dnow and sse intruction sets will improve performance on some kind of applications / libraries. It's a pity to waste our xmm and mmx registers because of a shrinking list of not working packages which can be compiled without these flags just adding an entry in package.use ...

3) I've unmasked them ( in /usr/portage/profiles/default-linux/amd64/use.mask since I don't know any other way) just to try and I had just a few problems, so there are some packages that could be ready.

The packages which gave me troubles where

xawtv and fftw didn't compile, I had to unset use flags un packages.use
transcode-1.0.0 compiles, but I have not tested it yet. Previous version didn't compile

The rest of the packages were emerged successfully and I'm using some of them (Xorg,xmms,xscreensaver,rss-glx) but other people could try The gimp or transcode if the use them frequently and tell us if they work. This is the list:

fangorn · Veteran Joined: 31 Jul 2004 Posts: 1886

IIRC the 2005.0 profile of amd64 implicitely sets sse, sse2 USE flags, because all amd64 processors support this. Not sure about 3dnow.

herbs · Retired Dev Joined: 11 Apr 2005 Posts: 11

There is no need to set these flags. Packages that support SIMD extensions on amd64 are hard-enabled in the ebuild (since all amd64 procs support them). Most of the packages you mention already enable these features on amd64 regardless of your use flags. Unmasking these flags globaly can only lead to problems in packages where support implies x86 specific assembly.

dryadcito · Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 11:59 am Post subject:

Ok, I thought they were disabled always since mplayer said it was compiled without them, but I will think it's the exception ...

nxsty · Veteran Joined: 23 Jun 2004 Posts: 1556 Location: .se

herbs · Retired Dev Joined: 11 Apr 2005 Posts: 11

Also from the mplayer pre7 ebuild:

freke · Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2005 8:43 pm Post subject:

Seems like I'm going ~amd64 on mplayer to test it out (unless the pre7 build is about to be marked stable?)

ycUygB1 · Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 1:22 pm Post subject:

Gnufsh · Guru Joined: 28 Dec 2002 Posts: 400 Location: Portland, OR

What about sse3? Not all amd64 cpus support sse3. Is there any way to enable support for that (in addition to -msse3)?

ycUygB1 · Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 1:53 pm Post subject: SSE3 worthless

My experience has been that SSE3 does not add any performance to anything. It's a bust.

Additionally, I don't think it is a supported configure option in fftw (according to fftw.org)

I've filed a bug report for the fftw ebuild. Do you think this was the right thing to do?

tnt · Veteran Joined: 27 Feb 2004 Posts: 1222

Are there any test about performance gains/drow-backs with -mfpu -m3dnow -mmmx -m3dnow -msse -msse2 and -msse3 on different CPUs?
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Gnufsh · Guru Joined: 28 Dec 2002 Posts: 400 Location: Portland, OR