2016-09-19 15:34 GMT+02:00 Allan McRae <al...@archlinux.org>: > On 19/09/16 23:14, Balló György via arch-dev-public wrote: > > 2016-09-19 7:02 GMT+02:00 Allan McRae <al...@archlinux.org>: > > > >> This goes beyond just adding SSE2 support. > >> > >> Years ago, Arch Linux was "optimised for modern processors". These were > >> the days when every other distro was using i386 and we had a blazingly > >> fast i686 port. Now every other distro uses i686 while we have sat > >> still. Even major software developments are starting to require SSE2. > >> It is time we moved forward. > >> > >> How can we achieve this? I see several options: > >> > >> 1) Do "nothing". Add a hook to the filesystem package that detects > >> whether a system has SSE2 support and blocks installation of certain > >> packages. > >> > >> 2) Add SSE2 to our optimisations and require "i686 + SSE2" > >> > >> 3) Move our minimum CPU to something less than 20 years old (even i786 > >> would get us SSE2+3 instructions and is 15 years old) > >> > >> 4) We add more modern CPU builds (and set them automatically building > >> once the base architecture is updated). > >> > >> > >> I am in favour of #3 for our 32-bit support. And that would be end of > >> line as far as 32 bit support in this distribution goes. > >> > >> > >> (We may want to consider #4 for our x86_64, but that is another > >> conversation). > >> > >> Allan > >> > > > > > > I would not be happy with #3, because I still have two 13 years old > systems > > with NetBurst-based CPUs without SSE3 support. But of course I don't use > > them in everyday use. > > > > If we limit our choice based on your CPU, then we need to limit based on > the other CPU mentioned in this thread. > > That should not be a consideration at all. What we need to do is think > about what make our distribution worthy of being a distribution. > Original the selling points were rolling release, vanilla packages and > optimised binaries. We have lost the latter. Do we want to get it back? >
Another option could be to keep i686 and x86_64 as is, and introduce new architectures with automatically built optimised packages for i686 + SSE2 or SSE3, and for x86_64 + SSE4.2 or AVX. This is something similar to your option #4, but keeps the compatibility with all existing systems. -- György Balló Trusted User