title: How do I enable the SSE4.2 instruction set in Visual C++?
body: <p>I am using the BRIEF descriptor in OpenCV in Visual C++ 2010 to match points in two images.</p>
  
  <p>In <a href="http://cvlab.epfl.ch/~lepetit/papers/calonder_eccv10.pdf" rel="nofollow">the paper</a> about the BRIEF-descriptor is written that it is possible to speed up things:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>"The BRIEF descriptor uses hamming distance, which can be done extremely fast on modern CPUs that often provide a specific instruction to perform a XOR or bit count
    operation, as is the case in the latest SSE instruction set."</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>With SSE4.2 enabled it should be speeded up. My questions is simply how I do this in Visual C++? </p>
  
  <p>An alternative way could be to choose another compiler supporting SSE4. For instance Intel's ICC. Is this really necessary?</p>