All modern PCs provide SIMD processing but there are no practical programming books telling you how to use it. Use of these techniques can allow programs to run 8 to 10 times faster than conventional programs on the same computer.

The book enables high-level language programmers to make effective use of a technology that at present is known to and utilised only by a handful of developers. They could write graphics programs that were much faster as a result. This will be of interest to practitioners of games programming, image processing, medical image analysis, video processing etc.

The book is intended as a programmer¿s introduction to the use of SIMD on PCs. It presents the underlying technology of SIMD processing on current PCs and looks at tools to exploit this including the Intel SIMD library and the Parallel Processing Language Vector Pascal. It explains how to cast algorithms in parallel to exploit the parallel processing capability of standard PCs obtaining large performance gains relative to conventional sequential compilers. It assumes a familiarity with imperative programming but not specifically with Pascal. It does not assume any prior familiarity with the SIMD programming model. The language translation system will be available either as a downloadable for Linux or Windows in association with the book. This book is aimed at practitioners with prior experience of imperative languages but not necessarily any familiarity with parallel programming techniques. It will be particularly useful for programmers in the rapidly growing area of games and multi-media entertainment, and it would also be useful to academics interested in parallel programming techniques or array programming languages. Table of Contents Part 1 1. Computer speed, program speed 2. SIMD Instruction Sets 3. SIMD programming in assembler and C 4. Intel SIMD Instructions 5. 3DNow Instructions Part II 6. Another Approach: Data Parallel Languages 7. Basics of vector Pascal 8. Algorithmic features of Vector Pascal 9. User Defined Types 10. Input and Output 11. Permutations and Polymorphism Part III Programming Examples 12. Advanced Set Programming 13. Parallel Image Processing 14. Pattern Recognition and Image Compression 15. 3D Graphics Part IV 16. Introduction to VIPER Appendix A: Compiler Porting Tools Appendix B: Software Download Appendix C: Using the Command Line Compiler