# SIMD Support

Type `VecElement{T}` is intended for building libraries of SIMD operations. Practical use of it requires using `llvmcall`. The type is defined as:

    immutable VecElement{T}
        value::T
    end

It has a special compilation rule: a homogeneous tuple of `VecElement{T}` maps to an LLVM `vector` type when `T` is a bitstype and the tuple length is in the set {2-6,8-10,16}.

At `-O3`, the compiler might automatically vectorize operations on such tuples. For example, the following program, when compiled with `julia -O3` generates two SIMD addition instructions (`addps`) on x86 systems:

    typealias m128 NTuple{4,VecElement{Float32}}

    function add(a::m128, b::m128)
        (VecElement(a[1].value+b[1].value),
         VecElement(a[2].value+b[2].value),
         VecElement(a[3].value+b[3].value),
         VecElement(a[4].value+b[4].value))
    end

    triple(c::m128) = add(add(c,c),c)

    code_native(triple,(m128,))

However, since the automatic vectorization cannot be relied upon, future use will mostly be via libraries that use `llvmcall`.