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> Vector API

In all fairness, simd<T> in C++ and portable-simd in Rust are both in preview. Not that there is a lack of alternate options there but still.

The languages that do have these APIs stable are Swift, C#, Mojo, Zig and Julia if I’m not mistaken. Stability means different things for some of these as Mojo and Zig are young languages.

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C++ compilers today already auto-vectorize simple loops, even without manual unrolling. For manual SIMD, I agree a built-in type would be best to abstract over the 10 different HW APIs.

This is true, but it is also very brittle and cannot kick in where compiler cannot assert that e.g. source and destination do not alias, where it might change semantics or where there might be side-effects that the compiler cannot hoist out of the loop body on your behalf.

Which is why most code that really cares about optimal HW utilization is vectorized explicitly - it's problematic to assert against potential regressions between compiler versions and addressing them is just as brittle.

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