The title pretty much explains it. How does one take advantage of CISC processor advantages like 3DNow, or SSE. I'm sure PPC has some sort of equivalent, no?

I found this on GameDev, but it appears to be a code style solely for this other compiler.

Now I understand stuff like MMX is pretty low level. Would it require the use of assembly to take advantage of? I'd rather write the functions myself, to see how it works, rather than just use a library.

I know *some* x86 assembly, and I've been studying it in the little spare time I don't devote to C++/OpenGL. If it requires asm programming then I'll stick with x86 only. PPC asm seems much harder, perhaps that's because there's less documentation on the subject.

Thanks for your input!

EDIT: Found this too, looks like a good place to start.

You mean "SIMD", this has nothing at all to do with the (almost-nonexistent) distinction between CISC and RISC...

If you search developer.apple.com for altivec and sse you'll quickly find the answers you need.

Use the Accelerate framework and you won't have to use asm. (note that it would will likely be better to send your data in large batches to reduce the function overhead, if you're that worried about performance)

Son of a Monkey's Uncle...

Apple gives you a framework to do this, how kind of them.

Thanks for the links guys, this'll give me something interesting to learn about.