Re: [git pull] x86 fixes
From: Ingo Molnar
Date: Mon Sep 08 2008 - 15:03:19 EST
* H. Peter Anvin <hpa@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Arjan van de Ven wrote:
>>
>> the ideal case would be "support them all"
>
> Not really. That would include things like the i386, which is a bunch
> of really nasty stuff.
agreed - especially the verify_area() impact makes it a non-starter.
but 486 and higher is certainly quite reasonable, and is still being
tested.
... and _in practice_ 99% of all systems that run Linux today understand
CMOV.
... _and_ in practice 99% of all new Linux systems shipped today are
Core2 or better.
... and so on it goes with this argument. Everyone has a different
target audience and there's no firm limit. Maybe what makes more sense
is to have some sort of time dependency:
support all x86 CPUs released in the last year
support all x86 CPUs released in the past 5 years
support all x86 CPUs released in the past 10 years
support all x86 CPUs released ever
[ ... or configure a specific model ]
and people/distributions would use _those_ switches. That means we could
continuously tweak those targets, as systems become obsolete and new
CPUs arrive.
Ingo
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