On Tue, Aug 29, 2017 at 07:56:59PM -0700, Daniel Hopson wrote:
The irony is that I'm the type who'd
advocate supporting i586 machines (pentium 1 and up, no cmov instructions), since those
are
useful for some VIA systems as well as old AMD K6, if anyone's still using those. I
deliberately
compiled an i586 distro a couple years back from source, and I constantly ran into
packages that
had assembly that required the cmov instructions. I fear we're in for a similar
problem with
SSE2.
Agreed. Though, I would think that there would be less of this with several non-Intel
based architectures gaining prominence.
The problem I think is that some packages make it very hard to turn
off
assembly routines that break compatibility, and then often when you do, you take an
unacceptable
performance hit.
Agreed. Performance isn't going to be the only problem. e.g. Gnome is well on it's
way to exceeding the 4GB ceiling.. We should maintain a list somewhere. I'd say we
just consider those programs unavailable for the architecture.
I'm actually questioning the utility of i686 at all if it
requires
SSE2, since I feel like there's a fairly slim generation of machines that supported
only i686
and no SSE2. While SSE2 was introduced in 2001, not every chip had it as far as I know. I
have
several Pentium 3 machines that work quite well actually, and I can still get use out of
them in
a pinch.
I think it comes down to population/demand and availability of hardware to debug. I'm
up for trying to support non-SSE2 hardware (or earlier) if we can find the machines and
the people to do the work. The i686 machines that I have are new enough to have SSE2. I
might be able to find something in the beige graveyard at work, but no promises. I think I
ran across a Fedora Core 1 disc a while back that I can use to check. :)
So, if we have anyone with non-SSE2 hardware is willing to help, please speak up!
I know, I'm a crusty luddite hehe.
Hah! You're in good company. :)
jeff
--
Jeff Backus
jeff.backus(a)gmail.com
http://github.com/jsbackus
http://gitlab.com/jsbackus