Comment by lossolo

8 years ago

Single Instruction Multiple Data

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIMD

ELI5: Your processor can process more data in parallel.

If you have for example loop that has something like this in the body:

a[i] + b[i] = c[i]

Using SIMD processor can make all this operations same time:

a[i] + b[i] = c[i]

a[i+1] + b[i+1] = c[i+1]

a[i+2] + b[i+2] = c[i+2]

a[i+3] + b[i+3] = c[i+3]

Normally in one iteration you would only get one of this addition done without SIMD, thanks to SIMD you can have multiple.

4 comments

lossolo

Reply
neogodless  8 years ago

Thanks! I get that if you don't already know the acronym, you're not the audience, but it is helpful to not have to search externally for a reference. Could you imagine if that was in a general programming magazine before global internet search engines were popular? You'd have to cross your fingers that your local encyclopedia has an entry!

ETA: My bad - I did not think to click that. Embarrassing. Thanks for pointing it out!

  • tempay  8 years ago

    In fairness the first word of the article is SIMD with a hyperlink to the Wikipedia page.

  • pjc50  8 years ago

    > Could you imagine if that was in a general programming magazine before global internet search engines were popular?

    Style manuals of the time encouraged expanding acronyms on first use, but I can imagine this wasn't consistently done in a technical field!