In message <45C510E8.3060602@comcast.net>, John Hassler <hasslerjc@comcast.net> wrote
Jonathan Griffitts wrote: Hi! I have installed SciPy 0.5.2 for Python 2.5 on several Windows computers, using the precompiled binary scipy-0.5.2.win32-py2.5.exe. This works fine on some, but on others it crashes Python with an Illegal Instruction exception. The crash is easy to find by running the test() suite or by attempting to make any use of scipy.integrate.quad. Digging into it, I see that the exception comes from _quadpack.pyd, and it dies at a MOVSD instruction. I believe MOVSD is an SSE2 instruction that is only implemented on the more recent CPUs from both Intel and AMD.
It's a problem with the Athlon. It also happened with a previous version of SciPy this summer.
This is not just an Athlon issue. It also fails on a Pentium 3 processor. To reiterate, this binary (scipy-0.5.2.win32-py2.5) uses SSE2 instructions, which are available only on the newer CPUs from both AMD and Intel. -- Jonathan Griffitts AnyWare Engineering Boulder, CO, USA