Motorola released a downloadable AltiVec function library for Linux that is supposed to significantly enhance CPU efficiency and throughput for networking and communications applications in systems using Motorola's G4 processor containing a PowerPC core. The library includes AltiVec-enabled equivalents of the Linux string.S and checksum.S files, along with modification process descriptions.

According to Motorola, the AltiVec-enabled functions have been demonstrated to offer up to 100% performance improvement when using the technology for memory copying and checksum calculation functions in the Linux kernel's TCP/IP protocol stacks. The 50% reduction in CPU utilization was achieved while delivering a TCP bulk data transfer stream at near Gigabit speed — with no modifications to the Linux TCP/IP stack and minimal modifications to the sockets layer routines, the company said. The existing sockets layer functions were modified to call the AltiVec technology-enabled memcpy and checksum functions from the library.

The AltiVec-enabled library is available to developers for free download.

 
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