Operating System Support
AVX adds new register-state through the 256-bit wide YMM register file, so explicit operating system support is required to properly save & restore AVX's new registers between context switches. The following operating system versions will support AVX:
- Apple OS X: Support for AVX added in 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) update released on June 23, 2011.
- Linux: supported since kernel version 2.6.30, released on June 9, 2009.
- Windows: supported in Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.; hotfix 2517374 available for non-SP1 version of Windows Server 2008 R2.; Windows 8
- Windows Server 2008 R2 Sp1 with Hyper-V requires a hotfix to support AMD AVX (Opteron 6200 and 4200 series) processors, kb 2568088
- FreeBSD in a patch submitted on 21 January 2012, which was included in the 9.1 stable release
- DragonFlyBSD added support in early 2013.
- Solaris 10 Update 10 and Solaris 11
Read more about this topic: Advanced Vector Extensions
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