From: "Don Singer" <don@singerspdx.com>

Date: September 14, 2007 3:54:47 PM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: Universal Version

Too bad, but thanks...it seems to run ok in Rosetta, but I have had

some apps completely fail using Rosetta, such as iAstrophot...so far,

AstroIIDC has run without a hicup:)

D

--- In Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com, Milton Aupperle <milton@...> wrote:

Don;

On 13-Sep-07, at 7:57 AM, Don Singer wrote:

Just wondering if anyone knew when the Universal version of Astro IIDC

will arrive?

It's going to be rolled in Astro IIDC 4, which will be Universal.  

It's around 1 million lines of code that have to be individually  

inspected and tested to ensure they have the correct endian.

I hoped it would be available in December, but there are a bunch of  

undocumented Apple QuickTime issues that means I can't re-use  any of  

the 16 bit code in the Bayer Codec within Astro IIDC that I had hoped  

too. Apple will not add RGB48 or ARGB64 bit support in x86 native, so  

for x86 we read the Big Endian 16 bit PowerPC video data out of the  

movie (which is how it comes out of the camera) , then convert to  

x86, then process it and then reconvert back to Big Endian again for  

RGB48/ARGB64. For Astro IIDC internally I need to leave it in x86  

endian so that I am not continually re-swapping the endian and  

wasting gobs of CPU cycles needlessly.

I strongly doubt that I will have time to convert, test and  

performance tune all our Altivec code to SSE3 either, just the time  

critical sections. Some of the Altivec code that bit/byte/nibble word  

swaps data on an element basis can't be ported to SSE because SSE  

does not support anything like that. SSE is really poor in comparison  

to what we had for Altivec in the G4/G5.

So my guess right now is 1st quarter of 2008.

HTH..

Milton J. Aupperle

President

ASC - Aupperle Services and Contracting

Mac Software (Drivers, Components and Application) Specialist

#1005 - 815 14th Avenue. S.W.

Calgary Alberta T2R0N5

1-(403)-229-9456

milton@...

www.outcastsoft.com

Proud Supporter of the "Party of Alberta"

http://www.partyofalberta.org/