Support for POWER8 processors

XL C/C++ for AIX®, V13.1 supports POWER8™ processors.

The new features and enhancements introduced in support of the POWER8 processors, fall under the following categories:

Mathematical Acceleration Subsystem (MASS) libraries for POWER8 processors

Vector libraries

The vector MASS library libmassvp8.a contains vector functions that have been tuned for the POWER8 architecture. The functions can be used in either 32-bit mode or 64-bit mode.

For more information about the vector libraries, see Using the vector libraries.

SIMD libraries

The MASS SIMD library libmass_simdp8.a contains an accelerated set of frequently used math built-in functions that provide improved performance over the corresponding standard system library functions.

For more information about the SIMD libraries, see Using the SIMD libraries.

Compiler options for POWER8 processors

The -qarch compiler option specifies the processor architecture for which code is generated. The -qtune compiler option tunes instruction selection, scheduling, and other architecture-dependent performance enhancements to run best on a specific hardware architecture.

The new -qarch=pwr8 suboption produces object code containing instructions that will run on the POWER8 hardware platforms. With the new -qtune=pwr8 suboption, optimizations are tuned for the POWER8 hardware platforms.

For more information, see -qarch and -qtune.

Built-in functions for POWER8 processors

New hardware built-in functions are added to support the following POWER8 processor features:
  • POWER8 functions for vector processing
  • POWER8 binary-coded decimal functions
  • POWER8 cryptography functions
  • POWER8 quad-word arithmetic functions
  • POWER8 load-and-reserve/store conditional instructions
  • POWER8 cache and data prefetch control functions
  • POWER8 transactional memory functions
  • POWER8 prefetch functions

For more information about built-in functions provided by XL C/C++, see Compiler built-in functions .

Parent topic: What's new for IBM XL C/C++ for AIX, V13.1