[A83] Re: General programming questions


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[A83] Re: General programming questions




At 08:19 PM 9/27/2001 +0200, you wrote:

>If I understand it right, assembly programming is processor-specific, that
>is, every processor has got it's own set of instructions.
>I can see how this relates to what we are doing, but how does this work on
>PC's, since there are obviously a lot of different processors??

PCs all take the same code because the core is still x86.  There are 
extensions such as MMX, 3DNow! SIMMD, SIMMD2, etc, that speed things up but 
can be done without. DirectX and related APIs help use those.  THe same is 
true with graphics processors.  A VSA100 has very different instructions 
from a GeForce3, but the  API detects the type of chip and translates.  In 
a worst case scenario, where the API cannot make ssense of any extras, the 
root x86 code is used, and speed drops.






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