On Wed, 22 Jul 1998 11:35:21 -0500, Photon <pho### [at] dtmfcom> wrote:
[...]
> However, despite all the media hype over the Multimedia
>benefits of MMX, MMX probably helps povray better than almost any
>application.  MMX instructions are SIMD math instrucions, allowing fast
>multiple operand mathematical operations (add, sub, div, mul, and
>logic).  Povray could probably see some big speedups by using MMX
>instructions deep down in the renderer in a few places for math
>calculations.

Unfortunately, MMX and FPU operations, at least on Pentiums, both use the 
same registers for different things, and swapping back and forth is costly.
But it doesn't matter much: almost all of the important math in POV is 
floating-point, and MMX doesn't help with that.

>Going back to the "no unix version?" question.... will the 3.1 source
>for the Windows version be released?  (and again.. why not in beta...
>makes testing much easier when you can see the source)... I'd already
>know about the MMX question.. or be able to attempt it myself... if the
>source were around..

The POV-Team told us during the 3.0 beta that they don't release source 
during beta because betas are time-limited, and they don't want people 
working around the time limitation, because they don't want to support 
beta versions past the beta period.  Whatever their reasons, it is their
source code and they can do what they want with it.  I'm just happy that 
they release it at all.

That said, Chris Young said on cgrr sometime last week that there is no
Linux build because their Linux guy had to leave the team, but they will
have that situation remedied soon.  (They already have a list of candidates,
so there's no point in trying to volunteer.)  For the actual message, go to 
Dejanews and use the advanced search to find postings to cgrr from 
Chris Young.

(cgrr is comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing, for those unfamiliar with it.)

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