I've been learning up a little on the cpu features and stumbled upon NEON.
From what I've read, it looks like NEON requires specific programming to use this, but is this completely true, or do the cpus that have this feature still find ways to untilize it and speed media processes for some applications even though there is not specific code for it?
There are a number of ways to make use of the NEON instructions. Some of them are:
Hand-coded assembler. This seems to be the best, if you want to achieve max performance. It also requires a good deal of effort and CS knowledge.
Last but not least, you can use NEON by just downloading apps that use it. Your favourite music player and your camera app put the NEON unit in your smartphone to good use.
Conclusion: NEON has a lot of usages, but it is only used if the code specifically contains NEON instructions. More technically, as @pst said, it must be targeted by a piece of code.
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