Altivec and Python

[Martin v. Loewis]

mtaylor at lowebroadway.com (Moray Taylor) writes:

> Just out of curiousity, is there anything in Python that takes
> advantage of the PPC G4's Altivec (Velocity Engine)?

I would not expect that. If you have a compiler that supports those
faciliities, then there is a slight chance that it emits the relevant
opcodes for Python source code. You can grep the assembler output of
your compiler to see whether it does, but I expect it won't.

In Python, you'ld normally use a different approach: If you have a
specific problem (or problem domain) that could use those facilities
(e.g. picture processing), then you find (or write) a C library that
offers you higher-level services for that problem. You arrange it that
the C library uses Altivec, and you arrange to use the C library from
Python.

HTH,
Martin