Re: [boost] [Proposal] Adding CPUID Library in Boost

Subject: Re: [boost] [Proposal] Adding CPUID Library in Boost
From: Andrey Semashev (andrey.semashev_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-12-12 01:45:47

On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 7:48 PM, Shakti Misra
<shakti.misra.study_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> Hi All,
> Any interest in a cross platform CPU ID library? For a application I wanted
> to get the CPUID mostly to check the SSE2 status. So I missed it in Boost.
> So any interest for it?
> I am currently evaluating the library
> http://libcpuid.sourceforge.net/
> This has a permissive license that I think can go with the Boost license.
> I mailed the author also, although he does not use boost, he told he can
> give any fixes or support needed.

I would find this library useful, although I have already implemented
a similar library for my closed project. I remember considering a few
open alternatives when I was deciding whether to write my own
implementation or not and I didn't find a suitable one. Libcpuid looks
promising but apparently lacks CPU cache parameters detection (LLC
size, cache line size and prefetch size would be very useful).

I'm not sure that Boost implementation should be based on an external
library. Libcpuid seems to be x86-only while I would prefer Boost
library to be easily extensible to other architectures. I know not
every architecture provides a cpuid-like operation but there probably
are other means.

I'm not particularly geared towards a header-only or compiled
implementation. My main requirement is that it should be lightweight
to include.