Development environment

[TAILLE]

Hi,

I am looking for buying a new computor and I would like to try to use the BMI1, BMI2 and TBM instructions. In this context can you help me on the two folllowing questions:
1) Do you know if Intel Core i9 8950HK supports these instructions ?
2) I am using Visual Studio 2008. What Visual Studio version should I get in order to be able to use these instructions?
Thank you for your help.

[Rein Halbersma]

Hi,

I am looking for buying a new computor and I would like to try to use the BMI1, BMI2 and TBM instructions. In this context can you help me on the two folllowing questions:
1) Do you know if Intel Core i9 8950HK supports these instructions ?
2) I am using Visual Studio 2008. What Visual Studio version should I get in order to be able to use these instructions?
Thank you for your help.

1) https://software.intel.com/sites/landin ... xpand=4119
So Haswell and later (~2014 and newer). Yours is Coffee Lake from 2018, so yes, BMI2 (in particular PDEP/PEXT are supported).

2) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/in ... ew=vs-2017
IIRC, PDEP/PEXT support was introduced in an update of the VS 2013 series (during the time in 2014 when Haswell CPUs became available).
I would strongly recommend that you upgrade to VS 2017, the optimizer is much better than with the ancient VS 2008.

[TAILLE]

Hi,

I am looking for buying a new computor and I would like to try to use the BMI1, BMI2 and TBM instructions. In this context can you help me on the two folllowing questions:
1) Do you know if Intel Core i9 8950HK supports these instructions ?
2) I am using Visual Studio 2008. What Visual Studio version should I get in order to be able to use these instructions?
Thank you for your help.

1) https://software.intel.com/sites/landin ... xpand=4119
So Haswell and later (~2014 and newer). Yours is Coffee Lake from 2018, so yes, BMI2 (in particular PDEP/PEXT are supported).

2) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/in ... ew=vs-2017
IIRC, PDEP/PEXT support was introduced in an update of the VS 2013 series (during the time in 2014 when Haswell CPUs became available).
I would strongly recommend that you upgrade to VS 2017, the optimizer is much better than with the ancient VS 2008.

Thank you Rein to have taken some time to answer my question.
Certainly I will follow your advices.
I have just installed the free Visual Studio Community 2017 on my current computor. My Damy version seems running but I have to review the output on the screen; the migration from VS2008 to VS2017 is not perfect. Anyway this new environment appears more interesting and I will continue my investigations.
Thank you again Rein

[Rein Halbersma]

Hi,

I am looking for buying a new computor and I would like to try to use the BMI1, BMI2 and TBM instructions. In this context can you help me on the two folllowing questions:
1) Do you know if Intel Core i9 8950HK supports these instructions ?
2) I am using Visual Studio 2008. What Visual Studio version should I get in order to be able to use these instructions?
Thank you for your help.

1) https://software.intel.com/sites/landin ... xpand=4119
So Haswell and later (~2014 and newer). Yours is Coffee Lake from 2018, so yes, BMI2 (in particular PDEP/PEXT are supported).

2) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/in ... ew=vs-2017
IIRC, PDEP/PEXT support was introduced in an update of the VS 2013 series (during the time in 2014 when Haswell CPUs became available).
I would strongly recommend that you upgrade to VS 2017, the optimizer is much better than with the ancient VS 2008.

Thank you Rein to have taken some time to answer my question.
Certainly I will follow your advices.
I have just installed the free Visual Studio Community 2017 on my current computor. My Damy version seems running but I have to review the output on the screen; the migration from VS2008 to VS2017 is not perfect. Anyway this new environment appears more interesting and I will continue my investigations.
Thank you again Rein

The benefits of VS 2017 compared to older versions are that a) it is supported through continuous updates, b) less bugs c) better optimization. Also you get better features such as version control builtin. VS 2019 is now being prepared, it would be a good idea to upgrade when that becomes available for similar reasons.

Migration from ancient versions (VS 2008) typically can fail because of incompatibilities of the solution / project files. In my experience, an easy fix is to keep your source code, but start a new project from scratch and manually set all the dependencies / compiler optimization flags again. Should not take more than an hour or so.

[TAILLE]

1) https://software.intel.com/sites/landin ... xpand=4119
So Haswell and later (~2014 and newer). Yours is Coffee Lake from 2018, so yes, BMI2 (in particular PDEP/PEXT are supported).

2) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/in ... ew=vs-2017
IIRC, PDEP/PEXT support was introduced in an update of the VS 2013 series (during the time in 2014 when Haswell CPUs became available).
I would strongly recommend that you upgrade to VS 2017, the optimizer is much better than with the ancient VS 2008.

Thank you Rein to have taken some time to answer my question.
Certainly I will follow your advices.
I have just installed the free Visual Studio Community 2017 on my current computor. My Damy version seems running but I have to review the output on the screen; the migration from VS2008 to VS2017 is not perfect. Anyway this new environment appears more interesting and I will continue my investigations.
Thank you again Rein

The benefits of VS 2017 compared to older versions are that a) it is supported through continuous updates, b) less bugs c) better optimization. Also you get better features such as version control builtin. VS 2019 is now being prepared, it would be a good idea to upgrade when that becomes available for similar reasons.

Migration from ancient versions (VS 2008) typically can fail because of incompatibilities of the solution / project files. In my experience, an easy fix is to keep your source code, but start a new project from scratch and manually set all the dependencies / compiler optimization flags again. Should not take more than an hour or so.

Rein,

Yes I understand. The only issue which remains after migration is the code responsible of drawings on the screen, including the use of fonts. It will cost me a lot if time to review this part of the code but it looks a very useful job because this part of the code is very old and I am not proud of it because it depends of the screen resolution. In a certain sense I am then rather happy to review this part!

Thank you again for your advices Rein, I appreciate!