2008/3/17, Simo Leone <simo@archlinux.org>:
Let's start off by saying that this is just me floating an idea out there, it's not so serious (yet...).
I've been toying around with the idea of starting to build our packages with --march=pentium2 instead of i686. This would mean that our binaries would make use of the MMX instruction set, and that our packages would no longer run on PentiumPro or older processors.
My logic here is that we are comitted to being a bleeding edge distro, so I think it very much fits our philosophy to phase out older processor families when they are hardly used anymore. Intel hasn't manufactured PentiumPro's since roughly 1998. The number of users running Arch on 10-year-old boxes must be something very close to zero, so I don't think we'd be disappointing anyone. Also making use of the MMX instruction set would give our multimedia apps a boost, and might make some other software inperceptibly snappier (gogo placebo effect!).
What do you guys think?
And how do you plan to name that arch then? Still i686, pentium2 or x86_32? Having support for MMX on 32-bit architecture is nice, but shifting from i686 to pentium2 cold be not easy to archieve (especially if -arch suffix will be changed) and benefits aren't that big IMO. -- Roman Kyrylych (Роман Кирилич)