A question about MMX.

A question about MMX.

[lk]

I have a Intel Pentium MMX machine and it acts as a mailserver, webserver,
ftp and I use X on it. I would like to know if the MMX instructions are
used by the kernel in this operations or not (networking, X etc.).


Thank you,

/me

Re: A question about MMX.

[Rasmus Bøg Hansen]

On Sat, 21 Apr 2001 lk@aniela.eu.org wrote:

> I have a Intel Pentium MMX machine and it acts as a mailserver, webserver,
> ftp and I use X on it. I would like to know if the MMX instructions are
> used by the kernel in this operations or not (networking, X etc.).

I _think_ some MMX is used if you configure the kernel for an
MMX-enabled CPU type, but not sure. But as MMX is mainly an extended
floating point instruction set, you will not have much use for it on a
server as you describe.

Rasmus

-- 
-- [ Rasmus 'Møffe' Bøg Hansen ] --------------------------------------
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              - Pine
--------------------------------- [ moffe at amagerkollegiet dot dk ] -

Re: A question about MMX.

[Alan Cox]

> I have a Intel Pentium MMX machine and it acts as a mailserver, webserver,
> ftp and I use X on it. I would like to know if the MMX instructions are
> used by the kernel in this operations or not (networking, X etc.).

In almost all cases - no. The MMX instructions are mostly not useful. A few
graphics operations benefit from them such as mpeg players but that is about
it.

On the AMD and Cyrix machines 3Dnow is used extensively by Mesa (3D) and by
many of the mp3 players. The winchip and athlon kernels also use mmx for
block copies but this isnt a win in the pentium case.

Re: A question about MMX.

[lk]

Thank you all who have responded my question.

Have a nice day!

/me


On Sat, 21 Apr 2001, Alan Cox wrote:

> > I have a Intel Pentium MMX machine and it acts as a mailserver, webserver,
> > ftp and I use X on it. I would like to know if the MMX instructions are
> > used by the kernel in this operations or not (networking, X etc.).
> 
> In almost all cases - no. The MMX instructions are mostly not useful. A few
> graphics operations benefit from them such as mpeg players but that is about
> it.
> 
> On the AMD and Cyrix machines 3Dnow is used extensively by Mesa (3D) and by
> many of the mp3 players. The winchip and athlon kernels also use mmx for
> block copies but this isnt a win in the pentium case.
> 
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
> 

Re: A question about MMX.

[Tim Walberg]

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MMX **is** potentially used in the md (RAID-5) code for parity
calculation, IIRC, though. That's about the only place that I
can think of that it's used, but I don't claim to know the
inner workings of the entire kernel, either...

			tw


On 04/21/2001 13:55 +0300, lk@aniela.eu.org wrote:
>>	
>>	I have a Intel Pentium MMX machine and it acts as a mailserver, webserver,
>>	ftp and I use X on it. I would like to know if the MMX instructions are
>>	used by the kernel in this operations or not (networking, X etc.).
>>	
>>	
>>	Thank you,
>>	
>>	/me
>>	
>>	-
>>	To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
>>	the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
>>	More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>>	Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
End of included message



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