[ultim]

On the intrinsics vs. asm topic, I will only say that intrinsics are more favorable to me personally, but I'll certainly accept contributed code written in asm too. I won't reject the integration of asm files just because they are not using intrinsics, as long as the contributor also provides a working integration into the current build system. So I say if the contributor is indifferent about using intrinsics or asm, please use intrinsics, but your contribution will be greatly appreciated otherwise too.

Intrinsics integrate more naturally into C compilers and into the existing build system. But maybe most importantly, pure intrinsics can be uniformly compiled into both 32bit and 64bit code, so they win by large in maintainability too. Many prefer asm because they find it easier to read, that is also important, but it is subjective, so I'll leave the choice up to you.

True, intrinsics do not always generate optimal code, but it will be close, and it will still be much better than traditional C code. And let's be honest, hand-written ASM is not guaranteed to be optimal either. Not to mention, code generation from intrinsics improves with better compilers.

But anyway, if you don't want to use intrinsics, that's fine by me too.