On Tue, Nov 30, 2004 at 11:36:23AM -0500, William M. Quarles wrote: > Dave Jones wrote: > > <snip> > > > 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. > > > >A number of reasons. > >- It's one more column in the matrix of supported kernels to worry about. > > This may seem insignificant, but it takes quite a while to push > > a kernel package through the buildsystem given how many variants > > it spits out. On a busy day (like for eg, just before release), it > > can take the better part of a day to get packages built. > >- The gain just isn't worth it over the 2.4 kernels. > > Now that the runtime optimisations get performed in 2.6, theres only > > one thing thats missing that would be in an Athlon optimised kernel, > > and thats the optimised copy_page/clear_page, which are really only > > a win when a lot of data is being copied back/forth between the kernel, > > and even then, only under certain usage patterns. I'll be surprised > > if this shows up on any real-world application. > <snip> > > Apparently the man who started this thread found his real-world > applications. I don't see any numbers. There's also nothing specifically indicating that building for Athlon is why he saw a performance win. If something else also got disabled (even inadvertantly), that could also factor into it. Dave
