Microarchitecture

When you download Salvus, you may have noticed that you have several choices with regards to which specific binary to download. We currently compile several different versions of each, each with instruction sets optimized for a certain processor architecture. It is important to choose the latest version compatible with you CPUs as large performance gains are sometimes possible with newer instruction sets.

• Linux (works with all distributions):

  • For generic x86-64 CPU architectures. Slowest but works everywhere. (required CPU features: MODE64, CMOV, SSE1, SSE2)
  • For Sandybridge architectures (required CPU features: x64-64 + AVX)
  • For Haswell architectures (required CPU features: Sandybridge + AVX2, BMI, BMI2, FMA)
  • For Skylake architectures (required CPU features: Haswell + ADX)

• OSX:

  • For generic x86-64 CPU architectures. Slowest but works everywhere. (required CPU features: MODE64, CMOV, SSE1, SSE2)
  • For Sandybridge architectures (required CPU features: x64-64 + AVX)
  • For Haswell architectures (required CPU features: Sandybridge + AVX2, BMI, BMI2, FMA)
  • Choose the most suitable one for your machine. Older ones will work with newer CPU architectures but might not run as efficient.