Some URLs for those who want to dig deeper into AltiVec:

Freescale's page as mentioned by bbrv (including the instruction set manuals for both assembly and C/C++):
http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/sit ... dGmKqW5Nf2

They also have the MPC7450 processor User Manual:
http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/do ... 7450UM.pdf

And the PowerPC 32 bit assembler reference manual, for those who don't want to heed my advice to stick with C/C++ :
http://www.freescale.com/files/product/ ... FPE32B.pdf
and the corrections to this manual:
http://www.freescale.com/files/product/ ... E32BAD.pdf

Apple's page (with a thorough AltiVec tuning tutorial):
http://developer.apple.com/hardware/ve/

Ars Technica hosts Jon "Hannibal" Stokes' articles on pipelining in modern CPUs:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu.ars

Then there is simdtech.org, which hosts some AltiVec files and the AltiVec mailinglist (with archives):
http://www.simdtech.org/altivec

There is still Ian Ollmann's original AltiVec tutorial floating around as PDF document, but it has since been superceded by Apple's online tutorial (Ian works at Apple these days).

Then there is my claim to fame, a table of optimal code sequences to create constant values in registers (this is not something you would need every day, but for ultimate tuning it can be handy. It somewhat alleviates AltiVec's lack of immediate operands):
http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/~ho ... tiVec.html


You will also need a good code profiler, but I don't know what is available on PowerPC Linux and/or MorphOS, so somebody else will have to supply that information. Just keep this thread going with more URLs!

For those who are interested in PowerPC assembler, there is also IBM's Compiler Writer's Guide:
http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/techlib/tech ... 96007558C6

There is also the good old paper on the GNU Superoptimizer, presenting examples of optimal POWER (the ancestor of PowerPC) assembler. Many of those can be ported directly.
http://www.swox.com/~tege/gso-pldi92.pdf

Thanks Holger!

Hey Dave, lets find a permenant place here on PPCZone for those links.

R&B

Hi,

I just wanted to let everyone know that the links database is open for submissions now. In a few days, we'll roll out a newly designed links page, but submissions are already open. Just login at PPCZone, and submit your link (click here)!

Thanks for everyone's support!
Dave