Will the “Macintel” systems support AltiVec?
Originally, according to page 53 of the first edition of Apple’s Universal Binary Programming Guidelines, “AltiVec instructions, because they are processor-specific, must be replaced o[n] Macintosh computers using Intel microprocessors.” However, the second edition of Apple’s Universal Binary Programming Guidelines no longer listed “code written specifically for AltiVec” as being incompatible with the “Rosetta” translator. This does not mean that the “Macintel” systems are able to take advantage of performance improvements that code written for AltiVec provides, these systems impressively are able to run applications with AltiVec instructions courtesy of Rosetta.
