Changing the default 32-bit x86 arch for Fedora 12

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 08:15:32PM -0400, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> Richard W.M. Jones (rjones at 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.

-- 
Richard Jones, Emerging Technologies, Red Hat  http://et.redhat.com/~rjones
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