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SoftWire 4.0.0 released

Started by C0D1F1ED May 13, 2003 at 12:49 AM 7 replies 650+ views

Original Post

May 13, 2003 at 12:49 AM

SoftWire is a run-time x86 assembler. It can be used as a JIT compiler back-end for scripting languages, or for dynamic code generation of optimized inner loops. This new version adds support for automatic register allocation. This enables you to write an efficient compiler back-end with x86 code as intermediate code! The same concept is successfully being used in the swShader project: http://sw-shader.sourceforge.net. Check the new section in Readme.html for more details.

neurokaotix

May 13, 2003 at 1:06 AM

It''s unfortunate that it only runs on Intel processors, considering the number of users you are instantly cutting off.

James Simmons
MindEngine Development
http://medev.sourceforge.net

thebolt00

May 13, 2003 at 6:37 AM

I must say that your SoftWire is cool stuff.
Accualy I myself use it in a similar project to swShader, called SoftVP (http://softvp.sourceforge.net) where we try to create a software implementation of ARB_vertex_program for opengl.

To neurokaotix: And how would a assembler be cross platform? An assembler is totaly dependant on the target machine

C0D1F1ED

May 13, 2003 at 8:13 AM

neurokaotix, it also supports AMD and Cyrix specific instruction sets. It''s limited to x86 though if that''s what you mean...

neurokaotix

May 13, 2003 at 8:42 AM

When I run it on any of my AMD processors (celeron and duron) it says that it requires MMX/SSE support.

thebolt00: No one said anything whatsoever about cross platform. I was talking about support of the second largest CPU manufacturer.

James Simmons
MindEngine Development
http://medev.sourceforge.net

[edited by - neurokaotix on May 13, 2003 9:45:02 AM]

thebolt00

May 13, 2003 at 8:47 AM

quote:
Original post by neurokaotix
When I run it on any of my AMD processors (celeron and duron) it says that it requires MMX/SSE support.

thebolt00: No one said anything whatsoever about cross platform. I was talking about support of the second largest CPU manufacturer.

James Simmons
MindEngine Development
http://medev.sourceforge.net

[edited by - neurokaotix on May 13, 2003 9:45:02 AM]

Sorry i missunderstood you

About SoftWire and AMD that is no problem. I havn''t owned a Intel-based machine in years, still i have no problem with SoftWire.

swShader on the other hand require SSE to function, something only newer AMD processors have (my AMD XP have, not sure earlier do). That is not a limitation of SoftWire but of swShader

-Marten Svanfeldt

neurokaotix

May 13, 2003 at 8:55 AM

Ahh that makes sense, I could run it on my XP 2400 then. I was trying to run it on older processors. Glad we got all of that cleared up

James Simmons
MindEngine Development
http://medev.sourceforge.net

C0D1F1ED

May 13, 2003 at 9:45 AM

quote:
Original post by neurokaotix
When I run it on any of my AMD processors (celeron and duron) it says that it requires MMX/SSE support.

Celeron is a trademark of Intel. Newer Celeron processors, like my Celeron 1200 MHz (Tualatin architecture) support SSE.

In the documentation I specifically mention that Athlon Thunderbird processors do not support SSE. Feel free to write a version that uses 3DNow! though, but you will have far inferior performance. Besides, a Gigaherz processor is highly recommended so you automatically need an Athlon XP, Pentium III or Pentium 4 to see the demo the "way it''s meant to be played".

Feel free to experiment with the Shader.txt file. I tested it with 256 texld instructions and it still didn''t fall back to ''second per frame'' performance. Try that with the reference rasterizer or even hardware...

C0D1F1ED

May 13, 2003 at 9:49 AM

Oops, I understand where the confusion came from. I only provided a link to the swShader project, while I was actually focussing on the SoftWire project and its new automatic register allocation feature. Sorry about that.

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