Dispatching

Intel® IPP uses multiple function implementations optimized for various CPUs. Dispatching refers to detection of your CPU and selecting the corresponding Intel IPP binary path. For example, the ippie9 library in the /redist/intel64/ipp directory contains the image processing libraries optimized for 64-bit applications on processors with Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions (Intel® AVX) enabled such as the 2^nd Generation Intel® Core™ processor family.

A single Intel IPP function, for example ippsCopy_8u(), may have many versions, each one optimized to run on a specific Intel® processor with specific architecture, for example, the 64-bit version of this function optimized for the 2^nd Generation Intel® Core™ processor is e9_ippsCopy_8u(), and version optimized for 64-bit applications on processors with Intel® Streaming SIMD Extensions 4.2 (Intel® SSE 4.2) is y8_ippsCopy_8u(). This means that a prefix before the function name determines CPU model. However, during normal operation the dispatcher determines the best version and you can call a generic function (ippsCopy_8u in this example).

Intel® IPP is designed to support application development on various Intel® architectures. This means that the API definition is common for all processors, while the underlying function implementation takes into account the strengths of each hardware generation.

By providing a single cross-architecture API, Intel IPP enables you to port features across Intel® processor-based desktop, server, and mobile platforms. You can use your code developed for one processor architecture for many processor generations.

The following table shows processor-specific codes that Intel IPP uses: