How to use AVX/pclmulqdq on Mac OS X

Question

I am trying to compile a program that uses the pclmulqdq instruction present in new Intel processors. I\'ve installed GCC 4.6 using macports but when I compile my program (w

Answer 1

The GNU assembler (GAS) is not supported in Mac OS X.

In order to use AVX, I had to:

• Install GCC using MacPorts;
• Replace the native OS X assembler (/usr/bin/as) by a script which calls the clang assembler.
• Compile the program with the installed GCC (e.g. gcc-mp-4.7)

The strange thing is that while the clang assembler supports AVX, the clang compiler does not recognize the AVX instrinsics, forcing the ugly workaround above.