Safar Altivec enabled?

danmacmandanmacman
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
Someone started a thread over at mozillazine.org about Firebird being Altivec enabled, so that got me wondering if Safari is. I did a quick search through the forums here and didnt find anything about it. If Safari isn't, what enhancements would we see and how hard would it be to implement?



*EDIT* In addition to Safari, what about Camino and OmniWeb?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    zozo Posts: 3,117member
    btw, is Flash plugin altivec enabled? If it isnt, THAT would help a lot.



    I'm not 100% sure if altivec enabling a web browser would help much... except with HUGE text files or whatnot. Still, probably small boost.
  • Reply 2 of 8
    pbpb Posts: 4,255member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by DanMacMan

    Someone started a thread over at mozillazine.org about Firebird being Altivec enabled, so that got me wondering if Safari is.



    What is the meaning of Altivec enabled browser? How Altivec could be used to accelerate internet operations/transfer/content display? For the last one, the answer is more obvious, I don't know for the others.
  • Reply 3 of 8
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Well whatever, Flash sucks ASS in Safari. It has for over a year. It's like watching a slideshow. It is also slow in Classic, when I open up Romp files (for OS 9, garrr)
  • Reply 4 of 8
    wjmoorewjmoore Posts: 210member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by PB

    What is the meaning of Altivec enabled browser? How Altivec could be used to accelerate internet operations/transfer/content display?



    Yes I was wondering the same thing. DanMacMan can you please post a link to the discussion about Firebird's Altivec use.
  • Reply 5 of 8
    mr. memr. me Posts: 3,221member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Aquatic

    Well whatever, Flash sucks ASS in Safari. It has for over a year. It's like watching a slideshow. It is also slow in Classic, when I open up Romp files (for OS 9, garrr)



    Works great for me. Flash animations display with smooth motion as do Flash movies made from photographed content.
  • Reply 6 of 8
    danmacmandanmacman Posts: 773member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by WJMoore

    Yes I was wondering the same thing. DanMacMan can you please post a link to the discussion about Firebird's Altivec use.



    No problem,



    http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=47389
  • Reply 7 of 8
    karl kuehnkarl kuehn Posts: 756member
    Just to sum up what was on that other thread:



    By Altivec enabled the poster meant that he simply had given the switch to gcc to allow Altivec instructions. He didn't know enough to know that this does nothing if you have not coded for Altivec.



    The only place that Altivec might come in handy is in image processing, and the only places where that might be in a web browser is when you are drawing things on top of another that have some transparency/translucency. PNG's with alpha, and anti-aliased text would cover it. But in both places you would probably spend more of your time in conditional branching, and so the chances are that you would actually waste processor cycles moving things in and out of the Altivec unit, far more waste than would be made up by the horsepower of Altivec.



    Altivec is a great SIMD engine, but like any other specialized piece of hardware, you have to choose the right jobs for it to be of benefit, web browsing just is not one of them.
  • Reply 8 of 8
    nebagakidnebagakid Posts: 2,692member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Aquatic

    Well whatever, Flash sucks ASS in Safari. It has for over a year. It's like watching a slideshow. It is also slow in Classic, when I open up Romp files (for OS 9, garrr)



    it is only a slideshow when the window playing the Flash movie is not front. Then it becomes choppy and stuff. At least for me.
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