SIMD For JavaScript Continues Coming Along

SIMD for JavaScript continues to be worked on by Mozilla, Google, Intel, and others for better accelerating particular workloads in the web.

SIMD.js is the API being worked on for Single Instruction Multiple Data that in turn will use SSE on x86 platforms, NEON on ARM, etc. As described today in a new Mozilla Hacks blog post, "SIMD.js is a new API being developed by Intel, Google, and Mozilla for JavaScript which introduces several new types and functions for doing SIMD computations. For example, the Float32x4 type represents 4 float32 values packed up together. The API contains functions to operate on those values together, including all the basic arithmetic operations, and operations to rearrange, load, and store such values. The intent is for browsers to implement this API directly, and provide optimized implementations that make use of SIMD instructions in the underlying hardware."

SIMD.js is currently supported in Firefox Nightly, there's a prototype implementation branch for Chromium, and it's currently under consideration for Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Those interested in more information on SIMD.js should check out the aforelinked blog post for plenty more details along with links to example code.