Brian Hurt wrote:
> Actually, I'd be inclined to go one step
> higher, and deal with arrays of vectors in what Intel calls SoA order
> (i.e. structure of arrays, instead of array of structures- so
> an array of
> 3-vectors would be represented by three arrays- the first
> array is the x
> values of all vectors, the second is the y values, etc.).  This makes
> maximizing the utilization of the SSE units a lot easier.

At the cost of inverting almost everyone's software architecture.  This
is ridiculous / stupid in the real world.  It's also baloney on
theoretical grounds: for just how many problems do you think it's worth
destrying memory coherence by putting structure elements very far apart
in memory?  If you only want to do SoA "for some array length, then
start over," just how segmented did you think I wanted my programming
model to be?

SoA might make sense if a language implementation did it totally behind
the scenes, presenting a seemingly AoS interface to programmers.
Exposing / locking into SoA is dumb, and yes, Intel is damn dumb.  You
don't think they're dumb, look at their chips.  They're good at fab and
marketing, they make lousy tack-on "kitchen sink" chips.


Cheers,                         www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA

"We live in a world of very bright people building
crappy software with total shit for tools and process."
                                - Ed Mckenzie
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