[arch-general] [arch-dev-public] RFC: Use x86_64-v2 architecture

[mpan]

   If a separate arch/repo is going to be set up, perhaps it would be 
wiser to go straight for v3? May yield even better results and 
eliminates the need to bump the version after a few years. Since people 
have a choice, there is no risk of leaving v1 and v2 users behind.


   If there is going to be a “hard bump” in requirements, giving no 
option to use older hardware, I would like to point out that there are a 
few issues.
  •  Somewhere in the thread it was mentioned that we’re talking about
     CPUs older than 15 years. Mine (E5300) is Q4 2008 and it is v1,
     with the highest point in sales occurring even later: I bought it
     around 2010 and it was by no means considered “old” at the time.
     That means machines not older than 10 years are being eliminated.
  •  I see surprisingly many people claim they do not support v2.
     It’s hardly reliable data, but it suggests that such a change
     is closer to kicking out 1/4 of the user base than “unimportant” 1%.
  •  So far no hard data to support the change, in particular one that
     would outweigh the downsides. It’s undeniable that tuning for
     newer CPUs increases performance in *some* software. But not only
     users of such programs, if they care about speed, compile
     them themselves; but — more importantly — that type of software
     does not represent the typical user experience. To argue such
     a change makes sense, one has to either provide data showing
     improvement, that is both statistically significant and noticeable,
     or the gain would have to be so huge that no further testing is
     needed (e.g. 50% increase in speed). For a typical user, not some
     selected pieces of software or synthetic tests. So far the only
     arguments I hear are “because it’s newer” and, in this thread,
     that someone believes the battery life got extended (though
     by unknown factor and that only applies to laptops).
     Wasn’t the latest mkinitcpio move to zstd enough of a warning?
  •  The change forces throwing away perfectly good hardware. Sure,
     abandoning 686 did the same, but then it was a question
     of maintaining a separate architecture, the arguments were very
     strong and in the end 686 users would be left behind anyway with
     or without Arch’s move to x86_64 only. In here we’re talking
     only about unquantified performance and battery life improvement.

   I believe that a separate arch/repo would be a better idea.


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