[openal] Feedback on OpenAL Soft's x86 build

[Lubomir I. Ivanov]

On 22 June 2018 at 08:38, Chris Robinson <chris.kcat at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah, I've seen code that does this. I'm sure it works at reducing the
> potential of denormals, but it feels more like a band-aid than a proper
> solution. Denormals can still be generated outside of the feedback loop, for
> example in the coefficients or other unassociated pieces of code, and they
> can also be passed in by the app. And in general, the x87 is just not very
> efficient at following the IEEE-754 standard (not wholly its fault since
> IIRC the x87 came before the standard, but still).
>
> While it may be worth doing something like that for x87 builds, when you
> care about performance it's generally just better to use SSE instructions
> with denormals disabled if possible.
>

i'm pretty sure that entire DAWs still exists the implement denormals
as the band-aid solution in the signal chain for the x87.
but i think that the x86 build should default to SSE on all compilers
at this point.
the CPU market and audio software has moved a lot, 20 years after SSE
was introduced.

a special case where a developer needs x87 (no-SSE) can be covered
either by special pre-compiled binaries or documentation that explains
which flags to use for the build system to disable SSE and newer
extensions.

lubomir
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