On 12/16/2014 08:03 PM, Michael J Wolf wrote:
> >> Hi
> >> We briefly discussed priorities for Fedora 22 and I had taken an
> >> action item to start an email conversation about this. So here is
> >> what I would like to see for Fedora 22.
> >>
> >> 1) Get the -mcpu and -mtune flags set properly for the LE build.
> >> Should be -mcpu=power7 -mtune=power8
> >
> > done, all packages that honour the Fedora system wide compiler flags
> > use them, if they don't it's a packaging bug
> >
> >> 2) Have a cloud image available
> >> 3) For BE I would like another subarch. Same packages as the current
> >> one but tuned for P8.
> >
> > you mean in addition to ppc64p7? can't we just switch ppc64p7 from
> > -mcpu=power7 -mtune=power7 to -mcpu=power7 -mtune=power8?
>
> This makes sense to me as it then mirrors what we have in ppc64le and
> it saves having more targets.
The disadvantage of this would be to cut off users that have Power 7 systems
and optimized code. So why would people want to optimize from Fedora 21 to
Fedora 22. You would be taking a big step back in performance. I don't
want to suggest keeping a subarch for each type of POWER system out
there. I
was thinking of keeping two. So when the next POWER arch that comes out,
the Power 7 subarch goes away and you would have Power 8 and the new
Power arch.
That would mean that enthusiasts like myself, happily running Fedora on
a Power 285 workstation, would lose Fedora?
I'd really like to keep it. Red Hat dropped Power5 support quite a time
ago, so if there ever comes a CentOS 7 ppc to life, it'd had to be
tweaked to run on those machines. *If*, that is. Furthermore, Power6
boxes aren't that old, either.
I just want to emphasize that with keeping "old" metal running (we're
not talking of ancient hardware) the useable hardware available for
people doing this on a hobbyists scale would be much bigger -- so would
be the community. Having Power 7 and Power 8 only, that wouldn't be the
case any longer.
Regards,
Timo