2008/3/17, Simo Leone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Let's start off by saying that this is just me floating an idea out there, > it's not so serious (yet...). > > I've been toying around with the idea of starting to build our > packages with --march=pentium2 instead of i686. This would mean that our > binaries would make use of the MMX instruction set, and that our > packages would no longer run on PentiumPro or older processors. > > My logic here is that we are comitted to being a bleeding edge distro, > so I think it very much fits our philosophy to phase out older > processor families when they are hardly used anymore. Intel hasn't > manufactured PentiumPro's since roughly 1998. The number of users > running Arch on 10-year-old boxes must be something very close to zero, > so I don't think we'd be disappointing anyone. Also making use of the > MMX instruction set would give our multimedia apps a boost, and might > make some other software inperceptibly snappier (gogo placebo effect!). > > What do you guys think?
And how do you plan to name that arch then? Still i686, pentium2 or x86_32? Having support for MMX on 32-bit architecture is nice, but shifting from i686 to pentium2 cold be not easy to archieve (especially if -arch suffix will be changed) and benefits aren't that big IMO. -- Roman Kyrylych (Роман Кирилич)
