Should we build i386 or i686 rpms?

[Aleksandar Milivojevic]

James Wilkinson wrote:

> As processors have got faster, memory hasn't kept up. So a cache miss is
> proportionately much more expensive, and using cache effectively more
> important. You can even find people reckoning that x86 these days is
> competitive with RISC because it's effectively a compression mechanism
> for RISC code!

If you ask me, it is more like developers of RISC processors are loosing 
battle on the financial field.  You can't really effectivly compete 
against giant such as Intel in very long term.  And RISC processors vere 
competing against Intel for a very long time now.

RISC processors historicaly have more registers, multiple FPU and 
integer units, multiple cores (something Intel just started to 
implement) and so on...  But they are lacking in some other areas and 
basically loosing frequency battle.  And really, there is only so much 
that better design can do against higher frequency...  Up until 
recently, frequencies of RISC processors were at about the same level as 
Intel processors (with exception of Alpha that was for one period of 
time way ahead of others on frequency front, but now has fallen way 
behind Intel).  If RISC processor is double the speed than Intel 
processor at the same frequency, and Intel makes processor that runs at 
3 or 4 times higher frequency, than obviously Intel is going to be 
faster...  Not really a rocket science.

-- 
Aleksandar Milivojevic <amilivojevic at pbl.ca>    Pollard Banknote Limited
Systems Administrator                           1499 Buffalo Place
Tel: (204) 474-2323 ext 276                     Winnipeg, MB  R3T 1L7