On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 08:15:32PM -0400, Bill Nottingham wrote:
Richard W.M. Jones (rjones(a)redhat.com) said:
> On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 08:01:09PM +0100, Jeremy Sanders wrote:
> > Bill Nottingham wrote:
> >
> > > - Faster and more consistent FP math by using SSE2 registers
> > > - Allows for autovectorization by GCC where necessary
> > > - More clearly delineates our support set of targets, sticking true
> > > to forwards innovation, not necessarily legacy support
> >
> > Why not leave it be and suggest people move to the less brain dead x86-64
> > instead? Innovation and legacy support.
> >
> > The slower x86 is, the more motivation there is to move to x86-64.
>
> +1 ...
Well, then... let's build 32-bit x86 with -O0. Or add a few sleep()s
strategically in glibc. That'll teach them.
Seriously, if there is a huge non-SSE2 (or, heck, non-SSE - that brings
back in Athlon-XP/MP and P3) userbase, that I can understand. But saying
'let's not try and make it better when we can do so with trivial effort -
let's
leave it slow/make it slower'... that's just silly.
It's fairly sensible to suppose that, at this stage, people who want
ix86 support aren't sitting around waiting for a 1% increase in
performance.
If they were then they'd be using the latest, hotest hardware, which
is all x86-64.
So compiling for baseline i386 isn't such a silly idea.
Rich.
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