Recent Fedora Core kernels (plus my SPEC file for 2.6.8-1.541 with Athlon support)

[William M. Quarles]

Charles R. Anderson wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 26, 2004 at 02:10:16PM -0400, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
>
>>3.  Athlon no longer a build option at all in the SPEC file
>>  Are there support issues with this?  Or was it another reasoning?**
> 
> The reason is the one you give below:
> 
>>[ **BTW, I'm fully aware that the i686 kernel runs fairly optimized on
>>Athlon. 
> 
>>But turning off the generic support, and optimizing for K7
>>makes a significant difference for me in engineering applications. ]
> 
> How significant?  Is this something most users are going to notice in 
> their use of the system?

A. I'm tired of Red Hat holding back on optimizations.  The architecture 
tree/network that RPM consults is kind of screwed up.  Not to mention 
that it is ridiculous to compile packages for i386 architecture that 
will never run on an i386, especially when the developers have dropped 
in MMX instrcutions in the assembly anyways, so the i386 designation is 
then meaningless.  It would be nice if RPM could call compilations for 
say pentium-mmx or pentium2 rather than forcing developers to insert 
this code manually via assembly, and possibly misleading those running 
regular Pentiums or Pentium Pros into thinking that the code will work 
on their computers (although I realize that some oter packages might 
need to be changed as well in order for this to really work).

B. Red Hat developers were saying before that we need more optimization 
for the Pentium 4 because it is obviously not running as well on i686 
optimizations as it could.  However, I have yet to see a Pentium 4 
optimized Fedora Core kernel come out.  Perhaps they're busy debating 
about whether to call it pentium4 or i786.

C. If it doesn't hurt and it would probably help, I don't see what's the 
matter with making an Athlon-optimized kernel.  And considering the 
complaints that I have seen, it would make even more sense to make a 
Pentium 4-optimized kernel available even if the Athlon one was not 
available.

Peace,
William