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The state of SIMD in Rust in 2026

209 points · 65 comments · verdagon

  1. Archit3ch · · focus · HN ↗
    Hot take: there is no portable SIMD.

    You can either have performance (=write manual ASM for each platform), or portability, but not both.

    What so-called "portable SIMD" libraries give you is "portable auto-vectorization". "Portable performance" is a global property of the algorithm. Relying on auto-vectorization will result in e.g. sub-optimal register spills in practice. The microbenchmarks will look great, though. ;)

    1. IshKebab · · focus · HN ↗
      It's a continuum. Some things basically all SIMD implementations support. Want to add 2 4xf32 vectors together? That's pretty easy to do portably.

      But yeah to be fair if you are at that point, you probably want to go fully non-portable anyway. Especially with AI.

      Has anyone even figured out how to do vector stuff (SVE/RVV) without assembly?

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