I just started learning altivec. It’s quite easy, actually easier than I expected, I can only recommend you to try.
What you need :
- a ppc with altivec enabled. any G4 or G5 based machine will do. I use the pegasos Freescale donated me in sept 2004, a nifty machine
- a linux distro, with altivec enabled gcc. Hm, what about gentoo linux ? 🙂
- documentation about altivec. In short, you’ll need a “altivec for newbie” tutorial. It’s not trivial to find those documentation, see below
- some very basic knowledge in C, an editor, gcc
And voil
unfortunately, altivec is mostly dead since Apple Computer does not use PowerPC any more.
I wouldn’t claim so easily that altivec is dead. Genesi might well sell a bunch of G4 before the end of ppc is announced.
altivec will have a big COMEBACK via the Playstation3 and the including CELL processor!!! 🙂
greetings