Hi, folks. It’s been a busy month around here. We’ve been working on all sorts of stuff that I can’t talk about right now, but in the meantime, we’ve also been responding to feedback on the SIMD types. So, since it’s busy, I’m just going to list off the details, and link to other places for more information.
- Probably the biggest news is that if you install the 4.5.2 runtime (check the .NET blog for details on that), you can use RyuJIT CTP4 on Windows Vista, 7, and 8, as well as Windows Server 2008, 2008 R2, and 2012. In the CTP1 FAQ, I made mention that 4.5.1 on “downlevel” OS’es looked different from a code generation perspective. Well, that’s been addressed in the 4.5.2 update, so we’re happy to support RyuJIT CTP4 across all platforms that support 4.5.2.
- Nearly all the available Vector<T> types are now accelerated! The only ones missing are Vector<uint> and Vector<ulong>. In addition, there are a handful of other methods that we are now accelerating, including the CopyTo() method, which means any performance you have measured is now completely invalidated! Wait, no I mean, any performance you measured could potentially be faster!
- The fixed-size vector types are all mutable, now. This was the single biggest piece of feedback we received, so we took it.
There you have it. For now, you can download the CTP4 bits from here. The BCL SIMD NuGet package has also been updated, so update that, and you should be good to go. Same directions as before for how to use the types, enable RyuJIT, all that stuff. As always, send feedback to ryujit@microsoft.com. Happy RyuJIT-ing!
-Kev