[arch-dev-public] Processor Generation++

[Roman Kyrylych]

2008/3/17, Simo Leone <simo at 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)