On Sun, 2004-11-28 at 17:42 -0500, William M. Quarles wrote: > Charles R. Anderson wrote: > > On Sun, Sep 26, 2004 at 02:10:16PM -0400, Bryan J. Smith wrote: > > > >>3. Athlon no longer a build option at all in the SPEC file > >> Are there support issues with this? Or was it another reasoning?** > > > > The reason is the one you give below: > > > >>[ **BTW, I'm fully aware that the i686 kernel runs fairly optimized on > >>Athlon. > > > >>But turning off the generic support, and optimizing for K7 > >>makes a significant difference for me in engineering applications. ] > > > > How significant? Is this something most users are going to notice in > > their use of the system? > > A. I'm tired of Red Hat holding back on optimizations. The architecture > tree/network that RPM consults is kind of screwed up. Not to mention > that it is ridiculous to compile packages for i386 architecture that > will never run on an i386, especially when the developers have dropped > in MMX instrcutions in the assembly anyways, so the i386 designation is > then meaningless. It would be nice if RPM could call compilations for > say pentium-mmx or pentium2 rather than forcing developers to insert > this code manually via assembly, and possibly misleading those running > regular Pentiums or Pentium Pros into thinking that the code will work > on their computers (although I realize that some oter packages might > need to be changed as well in order for this to really work). > If you really are running systems that are about 7 - 10 years old (pentiums) then you should be using software that was optimized for that hardware when it was new rather than trying to use the latest software that is being written for performance on Athalon/P4/Athalon64 and complaining because this new software is not optimized for your old hardware. Software gets updated to follow the performance of the hardware and is coded to work with the current commonly used versions of hardware with a lot of backwards compatibility, but not optimized for the older hardware that is no longer being produced. You are free to roll your own kernels and optimize them as you see fit for your specific hardware at any time. > B. Red Hat developers were saying before that we need more optimization > for the Pentium 4 because it is obviously not running as well on i686 > optimizations as it could. However, I have yet to see a Pentium 4 > optimized Fedora Core kernel come out. Perhaps they're busy debating > about whether to call it pentium4 or i786. > That is plain whining. The processors are named by the manufacturer. You cannot lay that blame on redhat developers. Intel is calling their chips P4, or the new one (maybe?) is the itanium (unless they changed it again). That is a name chosen by Intel, and not by software developers/packagers. Optimizations also belong to the kernel development team, and not redhat developers. > C. If it doesn't hurt and it would probably help, I don't see what's the > matter with making an Athlon-optimized kernel. And considering the > complaints that I have seen, it would make even more sense to make a > Pentium 4-optimized kernel available even if the Athlon one was not > available. > See earlier discussion on this list about the kernel and the architecture specifics. I was told (on this list) that it has been determined that the i686 code contains optimizations that make a separate architecture version for the athalon obsolete since the 2.6 kernel is out. The time frame to search on the archives is just about a month prior to the FC2 release. . > Peace, > William >
