[arch-general] Fwd: [arch-dev-public] i686 and SSE2
On Mon, Sep 19, 2016 at 12:40 PM, Christian Hesse
We could just keep i686 as-is for maximum compatibility. Let's take a realistic look at the things: Most users run i686, so why bother and optimize i686 - just to save some CPU cycles for a minority? (I would even wast CPU cycle rebuilding a bunch of packages... pacman tells me the effected boxes have 399 packages installed.)
Except you could just happen to have it backwards. The few non-sse2 32 bit cpus that run arch could be served their own specialised distribution, while a majority benefits from saving said few cpu cycles. cheers! mar77i
2016-09-19 12:22 GMT+02:00 Florian Pritz via arch-dev-public < arch-dev-public@archlinux.org>:
I'm not really sure why we want to even invest time in making all i686 packages use more features. Most of our users run x86_64 already so maybe we should think about increasing feature support there since that will have a bigger impact.
This is an excellent point. Be it i686, i686+SSE2, i786, or whatever, they are all legacy platforms. You cannot seriously say "optimised for modern processors" and "i686" in the same sentence. I don't see how there is much gain from optimising them, especially since most users are using x86_64 anyway. In my opinion, we should keep i686 as it is, as a legacy platform, until it is used so little that we drop it completely. Anyone who is concerned about performance has moved to x86_64 a long time ago. Sebastiaan
On Mon, 19 Sep 2016 20:03:52 +0200, Sebastiaan Lokhorst wrote:
You cannot seriously say "optimised for modern processors" and "i686" in the same sentence.
FWIW https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2016-September/273691.... ;) I'm a x86_64 user, so I don't care about it regarding my needs. However, Arch users who don't need new machines for their needs, easily could run into the same issue, as this FreeBSD user. The whole FreeBSD list missed the forest for the trees. I only noticed it, because I'm subscribed to another FreeBSD list, too. IMO we could assume that FreeBSD users are a similar target group as Arch users. If so, then it could cause a lot of pain for Arch users and maintainers, too. Regards, Ralf
On Sat, 24 Sep 2016 22:24:32 +0200
Ralf Mardorf
...IMO we could assume that FreeBSD users are a similar target group as Arch users. If so, then it could cause a lot of pain for Arch users and maintainers, too.
Regards, Ralf
I wouldn't assume that. BSDs in general are very conservative about updates, which is exactly the opposite of Arch. There are already packages in the repos that require SSE2, including Chromium.
participants (4)
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Doug Newgard
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Martin Kühne
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Ralf Mardorf
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Sebastiaan Lokhorst