The speed benefit comes from the processor, not the applications, as it were, although they must be optimized for it. Any OS that runs on a PPC 7400 (G4) can take advantage of the AltiVec instructions. So, x86 linux won't get this benefit. An interesting thing to know would be who's patches to GCC these are (I haven't looked at the web site). Apple's version of egcs for Darwin has Altivec support (from Motorola, actually), and it's been available for while. They're in the process of assigning copyright of 60,000+ lines of gcc patches to the FSF, so it should become part of the main tree at some point.
"An old friend familiar with operations at Connectix recently confirmed for Rumors the existence of an open-source Linux version of their popular Virtual GameStation product. "
You gotta wonder about MacOS Rumors when they don't even understand what 'Open Source' means. If it was truly an Open Source product, we wouldn't be sitting around here talking about it...we'd have it.
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The speed benefit comes from the processor, not the applications, as it were, although they must be optimized for it. Any OS that runs on a PPC 7400 (G4) can take advantage of the AltiVec instructions. So, x86 linux won't get this benefit. An interesting thing to know would be who's patches to GCC these are (I haven't looked at the web site). Apple's version of egcs for Darwin has Altivec support (from Motorola, actually), and it's been available for while. They're in the process of assigning copyright of 60,000+ lines of gcc patches to the FSF, so it should become part of the main tree at some point.
"An old friend familiar with operations at Connectix recently confirmed for Rumors the existence of an open-source Linux version of their popular Virtual GameStation product. "
You gotta wonder about MacOS Rumors when they don't even understand what 'Open Source' means. If it was truly an Open Source product, we wouldn't be sitting around here talking about it...we'd have it.