Intel Corporation is introducing an enhanced technology to provide mobile handset users with a better multimedia experience, including clearer graphics, faster video, and improved power efficiency.
Intel announces Wireless MMX2
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mmx was here to “make the internet faster”
Wow. NAUSIS! (Not Another Useless SIMD Instruction Set)
How does another piss-weak SIMD implementation make ‘clearer graphics, faster video, and improved power efficiency’?
I remember back in the PMMX days, in my local computer store where they had a video playing constantly showing a computer without MMX and with MMX. I still remember laughing my ass off, I do it again.
“I still remember laughing my ass off, I do it again. ”
What were you laughing at, your blatant ignorance of computer architecture?
Intel got ARM processor stuff along with the Alpha fabs
as part of a lawsuit settlement with Digital. Intel sells
ARM chips for mobile phones and other low-power stuff.
Now the ARM chips will have MMX, presumably with opcodes
that don’t conflict with other ARM instructions.
Can’t you do *anything* right the first time??
Nobody wants something like MMX, 3DNow, MMX2, SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 on the nice ARM architecture.
Chances are people want something like Altivec: one extension to the architecture that’s well thought-out, so we don’t have to update our compilers every other year!
for giving us the internets!!
we have WIRELESS INSTRUCTIONS!
the new age is here today.
what this really means is that they will be able to launch another set of expensive, flashy advertisements promoting a feature that isn’t terribly exciting but everyone will still want it anyway even though they don’t understand what it is.
if this were the pc market i would say this is about getting people into best buy and asking for that “intel inside thing… oh and i want it with the mxmtoo”. intel knows that these technologies aren’t likely to be used to great extent but they are great marketing tools with potential uses, that lock you down into their platform.
in this context with mobile technology i have no idea how it will be used in the marketplace. my guess is that it might actually be used for something by a few manufacturers. how though who knows. if it is anything like most cell phones with fancy functions though the cell phone networks will want to find a way of making you pay for it if they can, even if it has nothing to do with their services…
What were you laughing at, your blatant ignorance of computer architecture?
Probably the way Intel tried to make it sound like MMX was going to speed everything up incredibly and make your beer taste better, when in fact it has basically no effect since (1) practically nothing is compiled to take advantage of it and (2) it’s not going to speed up a lot of tasks (ie. the unfortunate “it’ll make your interweb faster!” thing).
There are exceptions, but they’re typically things like audio/video encoding that you don’t expect to be responsive anyway; it makes little difference if encoding an mpeg takes 4 hours or 5, you’re going to leave it overnight anyway…
What’s it going to do anyway? Is it going to make my phone dial faster, or write text messages better? No… do I care if it’ll play video better? NO!
“(1) practically nothing is compiled to take advantage of it”
Then you clearly have not really payed much attention to software developed in the past, I dunno 5 years or so.
“(2) it’s not going to speed up a lot of tasks (ie. the unfortunate “it’ll make your interweb faster!” thing).”
Believe it or not, MMX is used like SUN’s VIS to actually speed up the TCP stack, go figure!
“There are exceptions, but they’re typically things like audio/video encoding that you don’t expect to be responsive anyway; it makes little difference if encoding an mpeg takes 4 hours or 5, you’re going to leave it overnight anyway…”
Again, I am afraid there is a clear ignorance for what those SIMD units are being used. As a clear example, most modern games use the SIMD units to speed up geometric transformations. Most realtime codecs (i.e. DECODERS not ENCODERS) use MMX instructions, and I could go on and on and on.
”
What’s it going to do anyway? Is it going to make my phone dial faster, or write text messages better? No… do I care if it’ll play video better? NO!”
Huh?
OK, before a lot of people keep on going on their beloved ARM being corrupted by a SIMD unit. There seems to be a generalized lack of understanding that these SIMD units are ideal for plenty of DSP tasks, for which an embedded processor coupled with a SIMD unit may shine.
Jeez…..
this is what happens when the marketing department is more powerful that the technical ones.
New products resulting from this technology will have FOSS drivers.
I remember back in the PMMX days, in my local computer store where they had a video playing constantly showing a computer without MMX and with MMX. I still remember laughing my ass off, I do it again.
Especially when any speed gain on the Pentium MMX compaired to the Classic pentium was due to that fact they doubled the L1 cache on the MMX Pentiums. Smoke and mirrors parlor trick(AMD does this alot)
I’m not at all against the ARM getting a SIMD unit.
I’m just worried about Intel doing it, since their record in implementing ONE GOOD SOLUTION isn’t too great. If MMX2 (yes, already their 2nd attempt at it!) is good, won’t be replaced in the next five years by “Mobile SSE” or “Wired Wireless MMX3” or “AMD Battery-powered 3DNow” (ok, not likely), and will get widespread acceptance, and of course, if it’s a nice instruction set (unlike what Intel usually builds), then I’m all for it.
oh yes, that was me posting…
“I still remember laughing my ass off, I do it again.”
I remember playing quake 2 on my amd k6-2 using the 3dnow optimized opengl (made by amd itself) for my voodoo2 card and it was much faster than the regular drivers.
Unreal also had hand coded mmx that made it much faster.