The CORE function provides the implementation for ChaCha_OperateKeystream_ALTIVEC, ChaCha_OperateKeystream_POWER7, BLAKE2_Compress32_ALTIVEC and BLAKE2_Compress32_POWER7. Depending on the options used to compile the source files, either POWER7 or ALTIVEC will be used.
This is needed to support the "new toolchain, ancient hardware" use case.
The way the existing ppc_simd.h is written makes it hard to to switch between the old Altivec loads and stores and the new POWER7 loads and stores. This checkin rewrites the wrappers to use _ALTIVEC_, _ARCH_PWR7 and _ARCH_PWR8. The wrappers in this file now honor -maltivec, -mcpu-power7 and -mcpu=power8. It allows users to compile a source file, like chacha_simd.cpp, with a lower ISA and things just work for them.
This costs about 0.6 cpb (700 MB/s on GCC112), but it makes the faster algorithm available to more machines. In the future we may want to provide both POWER7 and POWER8
Jeffrey Walton