====== AltiVec Fractal Carbon ======

[[http://daugerresearch.com/fractaldemos/altivecfractalcarbon.html|AltiVec Fractal Carbon]] is a numerically-intensive parallel graphics application that uses the Velocity Engine, a.k.a. AltiVec for its computations. Version 1.3 was used in this experiment.

===== Results =====

Each row in the following table shows the average MegaFlops (out of 3 runs) obtained on each system. A score is then assigned to each platform, with a reference score of 1.00 for a run under MacOS 9.0.4 within SheepShaver for MacOS X. All guest systems were MacOS 9.0.4 except PearPC which run MacOS 10.2.

{{page>common:benchmarks:altivec_results}}

===== Comments =====

  * SheepShaver AltiVec results were achieved on Linux/x86-64 with a snapshot from 2005/03/14.

  * PearPC results were obtained with a 0.4pre build with AltiVec support on Windows. That's the prasys build as of 2005/03/16.

  * The program displays some glitches while computing a scene. However, this only happens when AltiVec is enabled and the program is running under SheepShaver for MacOS X.

  * There is no specific optimization in the SheepShaver AltiVec emulation code but some SSE. Even though the current JIT is very basic and does not allocate SSE registers, performance is again on par with a run within SheepShaver on a PowerPC G4/400.

  * Contrary to what people usually claim on certain forums, PearPC is clearly not the fastest PowerPC G4 emulator, and definitely not the first... The AltiVec emulation is currently twice as slow as SheepShaver, even though it performs register allocation of SSE registers. This is reasonnable though.