mmx instructions

[Al-Arif bin Ozguxxx]

Hi, everybody. I am just curious, my brother has asked my if I knew about mmx instructions, I think he'll use it for optimizing some c++ code, anyway is mmx support used anywhere in os development? BTW, I dont know anything about mmx stuff. Also do you know if mmx instructions can be used as inline asm in visual c++?

[Schol-R-LEA]

Actually, MMX (Multi-Media eXtension) instructions aren't likely to show up in OS development, except perhaps for OpenGL drivers. They are mostly used in video games, rendering, video mixing, and high performance audio-visual software.

[Pype.Clicker]

the only thing a OS developer needs to worry about MMX is how to save/restore the MMX state at thread switches.

[Tim]

The NT kernel seems to use MMX or XMM in its zero page thread, to zero pages quickly.