[boost] Going forward with Boost.SIMD

Subject: [boost] Going forward with Boost.SIMD
From: Mathias Gaunard (mathias.gaunard_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-04-18 06:46:33

Hi,

This week I presented a proposal to the C++ standards committee to 
provide a standard library component for SIMD computation based on the 
library in development Boost.SIMD (not yet a Boost library).

I was hoping to get feedback on the interface and establish an API that 
would satisfy hardware and compiler vendors.

Unfortunately the concurrency/parallelism group has decided that they do 
not want C++ to provide types representing SIMD registers.
I'm afraid I don't quite understand the rationale for such a refusal; 
proposing more high-level constructs similar to valarray (or to our own 
library NT2) was suggested, but that's obviously a more complex and 
limited API, not a basic building block to program portably a specific 
processor unit.

Development of Boost.SIMD will still proceed, aiming for integration in 
Boost, but standardization appears to be definitely out of the question.
Any feedback of the API presented in the proposal is welcome.
<http://open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG21/docs/papers/2013/n3571.pdf>