[ccp4bb]: Thanks for Altivec feedback

[Derek Logan <derek.logan@mbfys.lu.se>]

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Hi,

Thanks to Bill, James, Ian and others who replied to my naive questions. 
I agree with almost everything that was said (comes from years of living 
in Sweden, you know...) For the time being we should probably be happy 
that MacOS X is so excellent to work with and that G4 PowerBooks are so 
portable, and not complaining about the speed for CPU-intensive 
crystallography applications, of which there are not, after all, that 
many. (Most CCP4 jobs are over in a matter of seconds to minutes and I 
have only experienced SHELXD and CNS as particularly slow on G4.) Maybe 
wireless networking will eliminate the need for portable CPUs at 
breakneck speeds, by allowing us access everywhere to our home (PC, 
Linux!) servers.

On the other hand, it was nice to get some (unofficial) feedback from 
Apple. (Maybe this discussion should now go over to the developer BB but 
I don't subscribe to it.) I had a nose around on their Web pages and 
noted that FFT, BLAS and LAPACK are all available in Altivec-optimised 
versions. Now if we could get all of those incorporated into CCP4 we 
would have solved 90% of the problem, n'est-ce pas?

Having said that, I feel I'm unable to volunteer. Programming skills 
much too rusty...

Cheers
Derek

P.S. I'm curious to know who Maximus Drusus Metellus is. It may be that 
he really is an old-timer, over 1600 years old in fact...