All modern PCs provide SIMD processing but there are no practical programming books telling you how to use it. Use of these techniques can allow programs to run 8 to 10 times faster than conventional programs on the same computer. The book enables high-level language programmers to make effective use of a technology that at present is known to and utilised only by a handful of developers. They could write graphics programs that were much faster as a result. This will be of interest to practitioners of games programming, image processing, medical image analysis, video processing etc.
"Any scientist or engineer having to analyze any volume of data should read this book. The streaming extensions on today's CPUs come to life with the code that is presented clearly and concisely, and your applications will learn to fly. Thumbs up for Paul Cockshott and Keith Renfrew."
Patrick Van Laake, Ph.D.
Equator Spatial Technologies
Endorsement for:
MMX and Streaming SIMD programming Using PCs and Linux
P. Cockshott & K. Renfrew, Springer, 2003
"Vector Pascal represents a major advance in enabling non-experts to exploit the byte-parallel processing capabilities of modern CPUs. Cockshott and Renfrew’s succinct book provides a well-written introduction to contemporary MMX and SIMD technology, and a solid grounding in using Vector Pascal and its tools to develop substantive image processing and graphics applications."
Dr Greg Michaelson
Head of Computer Science
Heriot-Watt University
Riccarton
EH14 4AS
greg@macs.hw.ac.uk
0131 451 3422