Re: [arch-general] [arch-dev-public] i686 and SSE2
On Fri, 2016-09-16 at 21:44 +0200, Bartłomiej Piotrowski wrote:
Actually, why don't raise the bar higher? SSE2 has been introduced in 2001 – that's 15 years to upgrade one's hardware and given my sad experiences with computers, I find it hard to believe anyone has that old PC that happens to run Arch.
We used to advertise ourselves as optimized for modern processors. Our "i786" really should include SSE3. For the same reason I would not complain about requiring SSE4 instructions for amd64.
In the 2000's AMD and Intel followed different paths with extensions. Checking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streaming_SIMD_Extensions and its links suggest AVX was the point where the paths became the same again. AVX was designed in 2008 , but first procesoors that supported it were launched in 2011 . My 2009 AMD opteron 2378 "Barcelona" processor advertises SSE, SSE2, 3DNow & 3DNowExt . I couldn't find specifics about 3DNowExt , but chances are big that software compiled with SSE3 , SSSE3 or SSE4 will crash on pre-2011 AMD processors. LW
On Fri, 2016-09-16 at 21:44 +0200, Bartłomiej Piotrowski wrote:
For the same reason I would not complain about requiring SSE4 instructions for amd64.
So you recommend to drop good hardware, to pollute our environment, to waste rare earth elements and things like this? [rocketmouse@archlinux ~]$ sudo hwinfo --cpu | head -8 01: None 00.0: 10103 CPU [Created at cpu.457] Unique ID: rdCR.j8NaKXDZtZ6 Hardware Class: cpu Arch: X86-64 Vendor: "AuthenticAMD" Model: 15.107.2 "AMD Athlon(tm) X2 Dual Core Processor BE-2350" Features: fpu,vme,de,pse,tsc,msr,pae,mce,cx8,apic,sep,mtrr,pge,mca,cmov,pat,pse36,clflush,mmx,fxsr,sse,sse2,ht,syscall,nx,mmxext,fxsr_opt,rdtscp,lm,3dnowext,3dnow,rep_good,nopl,extd_apicid,eagerfpu,pni,cx16,lahf_lm,cmp_legacy,svm,extapic,cr8_legacy,3dnowprefetch,vmmcall,lbrv
...I'm all for making arch work well for the hardware it runs well on, and I don't think expecting SSE2 is too bleeding edge wrt hardware constraints. There are other distros that work well on cpus that aren't up to par with arch's needs. I started using gentoo on my pcengines board due to already existing performance concerns for its amd geode/i[45]86 cpu. cheers! mar77i
It would probably also give more arguments/hardware in need of a retro-cpu archlinux variant/project which I'd like to see and would help out with. Which in turn might be a better alternative for my Geode as well. Just my 2¢ to this. cheers! mar77i
egrep "^model name|^flags" /proc/cpuinfo model name : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+ flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov
I'm not sure enforcing sse3 or later for AMD64 hardware is the best course of action. pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 3dnow rep_good nopl eagerfpu pni lahf_lm 3dnowprefetch vmmcall This machine is still able to run Arch just fine, and has saved the day when the laptop I used day to day broke down. As others have said, AMD cpus might not have sse4 unless they are quite recent. Requiring sse2 might be a reasonable cutoff, but I'm sure there will be people still using older machines that will complain if sse2 is mandatory, as I can reasonably see late pentium 3 machines still being usable for office, email or light browsing applications. -- Mauro Santos
On Saturday, 17 September 2016 15:10:48 CEST LoneVVolf wrote:
On Fri, 2016-09-16 at 21:44 +0200, Bartłomiej Piotrowski wrote:
Actually, why don't raise the bar higher? SSE2 has been introduced in 2001 – that's 15 years to upgrade one's hardware and given my sad experiences with computers, I find it hard to believe anyone has that old PC that happens to run Arch.
I did not receive the above Bartlomiej's mail from the Arch Mailing List or even the thread starter. Was it a private mail? I need to know because otherwise it is getting rejected by my mail provider and I need to know what? -- Cheers Jayesh Badwaik
On Sun, 18 Sep 2016 14:50:09 +0200 Jayesh Badwaik <archlinux@jayeshbadwaik.in> wrote:
On Saturday, 17 September 2016 15:10:48 CEST LoneVVolf wrote:
On Fri, 2016-09-16 at 21:44 +0200, Bartłomiej Piotrowski wrote:
Actually, why don't raise the bar higher? SSE2 has been introduced in 2001 – that's 15 years to upgrade one's hardware and given my sad experiences with computers, I find it hard to believe anyone has that old PC that happens to run Arch.
I did not receive the above Bartlomiej's mail from the Arch Mailing List or even the thread starter. Was it a private mail? I need to know because otherwise it is getting rejected by my mail provider and I need to know what?
This thread is split between arch-general and arch-dev-public
On Sunday, 18 September 2016 07:53:56 CEST Doug Newgard wrote:
This thread is split between arch-general and arch-dev-public
Ohh, my bad. Did not properly read the headers. Thank You. -- Cheers Jayesh Badwaik
participants (6)
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Doug Newgard
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Jayesh Badwaik
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LoneVVolf
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Martin Kühne
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Mauro Santos
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Ralf Mardorf