ispc/ispc v1.6.0

v1.6.0 (19 December 2013)

on GitHub

A major new version of ISPC with major improvements in performance and
stability. Linux and MacOS binaries are based on patched version of LLVM 3.3,
while Windows version is based on LLVM 3.4rc3. LLVM 3.4 significantly improves
stability on Win32 platform, so we've decided not to wait for official LLVM 3.4
release.

The list of the most significant changes is:

• New avx1-i32x4 target was added. It may play well for you, if you are focused
  on integer computations or FP unit in your hardware is 128 bit wide.

• Support for calculations in double precision was extended with two new
  targets avx1.1-i64x4 and avx2-i64x4.

• Language support for overloaded operators was added.

• New library shift() function was added, which is similar to rotate(), but is
  non-circular.

• The language was extended to accept 3 dimensional tasking - a syntactic sugar,
  which may facilitate programming of some tasks.

• Regression, which broke --opt=force-aligned-memory is fixed.

If you are not using pre-built binaries, you may notice the following changes:

• VS2012/VS2013 are supported.

• alloy.py (with -b switch) can build LLVM for you on any platform now
  (except MacOS 10.9, but we know about the problem and working on it).
  This is a preferred way to build LLVM for ISPC, as all required patches for
  better performance and stability will automatically apply.

• LLVM 3.5 (current trunk) is supported.

There are also multiple fixes for better performance and stability, most
notable are:

• Fixed performance problem for x2 targets.

• Fixed a problem with incorrect vzeroupper insertion on AVX target on Win32.