EMC and Vector Processors

["Adam" <ghettoscientist-at-hotpop.com>]

I was curious if EMC could benefit from a vector execution unit.

Motorola 8xx PowerPC processors (the processor family that powers Apple's G4
computers) contains a 128 bit vector unit.  This unit can execute up to 16
operations in a single clock cycle.  The number of parallel operations is
actually dependent on the precision of math being used; 16-way parallelism
for 8-bit signed and unsigned integers and characters, 8-way parallelism for
16-bit signed and unsigned integers
4-way parallelism for 32-bit signed and unsigned integers and IEEE
floating-point numbers.

I was wondering if it would be possible to off load EMC's servo loops to the
vector unit while executing other operations in the classic integer and
floating point sections of the processor.

More information about Motorola's AltiVec vector processor can be found at
the following sites...

http://www.altivec.org/
http://developer.apple.com/hardware/ve/index.html
http://www.motorola.com/SPS/PowerPC/AltiVec/
http://www.altivec.org/introduction/SNDF_AltiVec_Umair.pdf
http://www.altivec.org/introduction/whitepaper_pdf.cfm

Thanks for listening to my random thoughts.  All ideas and comments would be
appreciated.

--adam