Hi !
	Does anybody know anything about PovRay support for AMD
K6-2 fancy addons called 3DNow! or something..
I upgraded recently from P120 to K6-2 266 and would like to get most
of it (although the speed difference is already some 3-4 times).
Tried to look for a patch or something, but K6-2 is nowhere mentioned.
(Haven't downloaded 3.1 yet, so please don't hit me if 3DNow! support
is included there, at least I didn't found it in description)
								UL

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Tere, Urmas!
Sorry, kirjutan inglise keeles, muidu teised ei saa aru...

As far as I know, 3DNow technology does not (and cannot) have any effect on
raytracers like POV (just like 3D accelerator cards). It only affects 3D games,
(possibly) VRML and other such stuff. These things are very different from
raytracing.
Btw. I would be happy with 266Mhz even without 3DNow - my 120Mhz486 kinda sucks
;)

Margus

Urmas Lipso wrote:
> 
> Hi !
>         Does anybody know anything about PovRay support for AMD
> K6-2 fancy addons called 3DNow! or something..
> I upgraded recently from P120 to K6-2 266 and would like to get most
> of it (although the speed difference is already some 3-4 times).
> Tried to look for a patch or something, but K6-2 is nowhere mentioned.
> (Haven't downloaded 3.1 yet, so please don't hit me if 3DNow! support
> is included there, at least I didn't found it in description)
>                                                                 UL

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On Sun, 01 Nov 1998 03:31:21 +0200, Margus Ramst <mar### [at] peakeduee>
wrote:

>As far as I know, 3DNow technology does not (and cannot) have any effect on
>raytracers like POV (just like 3D accelerator cards). It only affects 3D games,
>(possibly) VRML and other such stuff. These things are very different from
>raytracing.

Actually, 3DNow could help POV-Ray in a few places.  3DNow is just
floating point operations on more than one operand at a time, it's not
hardware acceleration of triangle drawing as found on a video card.
However, to get any real use out of it you'd have to really tweak the
POV code, at the expense of portability.  On top of that, no
mainstream compilers currently support the 3DNow instruction set.  

Optimizing for the K6-2's specific architecture would probably gain
you more performance than supporting 3DNow.  But again, finding a
compiler that knows how to optimize for a K6-2 would be a real chore.

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Sorry 'bout the misinformation... Sth. I read at the net gave me the wrong
impression.
But if, like your post seems to suggest, 3DNow technology involves float
operations, shouldn't it help in more than just a few places? Is it sth. like an
advanced FPU?
Just curious...

Margus

Ronald L. Parker wrote:

> Actually, 3DNow could help POV-Ray in a few places.  3DNow is just
> floating point operations on more than one operand at a time, it's not
> hardware acceleration of triangle drawing as found on a video card.
> However, to get any real use out of it you'd have to really tweak the
> POV code, at the expense of portability.  On top of that, no
> mainstream compilers currently support the 3DNow instruction set.
> 
> Optimizing for the K6-2's specific architecture would probably gain
> you more performance than supporting 3DNow.  But again, finding a
> compiler that knows how to optimize for a K6-2 would be a real chore.

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Ronald L. Parker wrote:
> 
> Actually, 3DNow could help POV-Ray in a few places.  3DNow is just
> floating point operations on more than one operand at a time, it's not
> hardware acceleration of triangle drawing as found on a video card.

That's not quite right. It's a SIMD architecture (Single Instruction,
Multiple, Data) that is similar to the MMX by Intel. It's right
that you can handle several floats at once, but with a limited
precision.

Markus

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On Mon, 02 Nov 1998 11:46:46 +0100, Markus Becker 
	<bec### [at] zessuni-siegende> wrote:
>Ronald L. Parker wrote:
>> 
>> Actually, 3DNow could help POV-Ray in a few places.  3DNow is just
>> floating point operations on more than one operand at a time, it's not
>> hardware acceleration of triangle drawing as found on a video card.
>
>That's not quite right. It's a SIMD architecture (Single Instruction,
>Multiple, Data) that is similar to the MMX by Intel. It's right
>that you can handle several floats at once, but with a limited
>precision.

So what about what I said is inaccurate?  ISTR that at least the 
2-operand form allows you to work with two 32-bit floats, which 
are equivalent in precision to the floats that are used with, for 
example, colours.  And overriding the colour functions, such as 
adding, scaling, and inverse-scaling colours, might not be such 
a difficult task.  However, again, I don't think one would gain 
much for one's labour.

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Margus Ramst wrote:

> Tere, Urmas!
> Sorry, kirjutan inglise keeles, muidu teised ei saa aru...

Could you enlighten me and tell me in what language is the above text.
Please accept my apologies for my ignorance.

Regards,
Al.

--
ANTI SPAM / ANTI ARROSAGE COMMERCIAL :

To answer me, please take out the Z from my address.

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Alain CULOS <ZAl### [at] bigfootcom> wrote:
: Margus Ramst wrote:

:> Tere, Urmas!
:> Sorry, kirjutan inglise keeles, muidu teised ei saa aru...

: Could you enlighten me and tell me in what language is the above text.
: Please accept my apologies for my ignorance.

  It looks Estonian or something like that. Looks a bit like finnish, but
I still can't understand it completely. I think it says something like
"I write in english language, ..." (in finnish it's "kirjoitan englannin


-- 
                                                           - Warp. -

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The text is in Estonian (I forgive you for not recognizing the language,
but I sure hope you have heard about Estonia ;))
I wrote this because Urmas Lipso is the only fellow Estonian I have seen
on this news server.
I hope there will be more, though...


minna.
(hehe, guess what I just said... I should put this in my signature)

Margus

Alain CULOS wrote:
> 
> Margus Ramst wrote:
> 
> > Tere, Urmas!
> > Sorry, kirjutan inglise keeles, muidu teised ei saa aru...
> 
> Could you enlighten me and tell me in what language is the above text.
> Please accept my apologies for my ignorance.
> 
> Regards,
> Al.
> 
> --
> ANTI SPAM / ANTI ARROSAGE COMMERCIAL :

> To answer me, please take out the Z from my address.

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Nieminen Mika wrote:

>It looks Estonian or something like that.

Bingo!
"I write in English, or else the others don't understand" or:


My Finnish isn't that great, but I believe this is pretty close...

Margus

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