[arch-general] Fwd: [arch-dev-public] i686 and SSE2

[Sebastiaan Lokhorst]

2016-09-19 12:22 GMT+02:00 Florian Pritz via arch-dev-public <
arch-dev-public at 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