[arch-dev-public] Processor Generation++

[Tobias Powalowski]

Am Montag, 17. März 2008 schrieb 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.

My opinion on this, why to desupport something which might be still used,
also we all know that x86_64 is the future and therefore i don't think the 
benefit is worth the trouble.
greetings
tpowa
-- 
Tobias Powalowski
Archlinux Developer & Package Maintainer (tpowa)
http://www.archlinux.org
tpowa at archlinux.org
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