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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. kccqzy · · focus · HN ↗
      Have you used the highway library? It’s portable SIMD done right. It does not rely on auto-vectorization. Instead it gives you a nicer API than using intrinsics, plus machinery to do dynamic dispatch.
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