Am 08.05.2017 um 02:13 schrieb green:

> pov-ray critical error
> failed to initialize frontend: timed out waiting for worker thread startup
> 
> unfortunately, it appears that the execution of an illegal instruction
> at address 0x000000014001d6d3 has caused this unofficial
> pov-ray build to crash. <write a dump?>


I think I have gotten down to the bottom of this now:

MS Visual Studio has an option called "Whole Program Optimization",
which allows the compiler/linker to optimize stuff looking at the "big
picture" rather than just individual source files. Apparently this can
cause a mess when programs have source files compiled with AVX
instructions enabled and others without, in that the compiler/linker may
accidentally "contaminate" the AVX-free portions with calls to portions
which happen to have been compiled with AVX instructions enabled.

There were also performance regressions on various AVX-capable CPUs,
which might have been due to a reverse proess, in which AVX-enabled code
portions would have been replaced with calls to portions that happened
to have been compiled without AVX instructions.


This has now been addressed in beta 7 by explicitly disallowing
AVX-enabled code portions to participate in whole program optimization
in any manner.

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