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Magically using Intel new instructions with no effort on your part

By David Stewart (Intel) (174 posts) on June 6, 2008 at 4:53 pm

This is episode #3 of the series of 5 minute videos I am doing on OpenSolaris and our open source optimizations for Xeon. This one is on how we are actually helping you get better performance by taking advantage of new Intel processor instructions without any effort on your part as a developer or user! (Well, you do need to have an up-to-date version of the OS!) http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/videos/home.aspx?fn=1499 Video is embedded below.

(I was having problems viewing this clip while I was in China this week. Not sure if they block blip.tv there or whether it was some other snafu. In any case, here is the YouTube link if you like, lower quality video but maybe more accessible?) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6313NNwWzGs

Categories: Open Source
Tags: new instructions, OpenSolaris, optimization, performance

For more complete information about compiler optimizations, see our Optimization Notice.

Comments (7)

June 7, 2008 12:11 AM PDT Che Kristo

Very interesting stuff...even as a non dev I can see how this will speed things up for me on the desktop...when I upgrade my Ultra 20 I will definitely be looking at the Ultra 24!

June 7, 2008 12:49 AM PDT UX-admin

The video isn't really viewable on my Solaris laptop -- I see maybe every 5th frame, and the CPU is pegged at 100%... (OpenSolaris b85.)

June 7, 2008 4:05 PM PDT David Stewart (Intel) Total Points: 12,330 Black Belt

@UX-admin, this is strange because it views fine on my 2008.05 Centrino Duo laptop, with NVidia graphics. You might try the YouTube version. Which system do you have?

June 8, 2008 8:32 AM PDT Hidrolof

@UX-admin: Lots of things can make Flash video slow, but in my experience it is mostly an X acceleration issue. It may be worth trying to switch to the EXA acceleration mode. Alternatively, as I see this is hosted on blip.tv, a natively playable format will certainly be smoother, like h.624 or if you have slow hardware Xvid. I can't figure out how to get the links to the alternative bliptv formats yet though...

June 9, 2008 7:46 AM PDT UX-admin

I have an AMD Athlon XP 1400+ @1.2GHz, Compaq Presario 900 laptop w/ 768MB RAM. ATI graphics running in VESA mode, I think (didn't bother to check, since Solaris "just runs" as far as graphics are concerned).

June 29, 2008 10:05 AM PDT EdwardOCallaghan

Thanks Intel ! Keep up your excellent work, I noticed general performance increases after snv91. Optimizing boot times would be a plus for us desktop/developer users as well. Thanks again, Edward.

June 29, 2008 11:42 AM PDT Dave Stewart

@EdwardOCallaghan There is some really good work done by Sherry at Sun to optimize the warm boot time. I confess I don't exactly know how to trigger it, since when I type "reboot" I get a cold boot, and this is the way I usually reboot my system. I'll check into it more when I get back to the US from vacationing in Prague. BIOS boot time is another matter altogether. This is normally what we call "Power On Self Test" or POST, and will vary widely based on the manufacturer's chosen firmware.

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