Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2012 00:40:51 -0700 From: Garrett Cooper <yanegomi@gmail.com> To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Dag=2DErling_Sm=F8rgrav?= <des@des.no> Cc: Konstantin Belousov <kostikbel@gmail.com>, Dimitry Andric <dimitry@andric.com>, Andriy Gapon <avg@freebsd.org>, freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: x86 boot code build Message-ID: <CAGH67wQqs9DJoy0LSgKi1_wMFyrHUE69Dgc2dht7q8VXDVAeQQ@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <86y5jll7kc.fsf@ds4.des.no> References: <506C385C.3020400@FreeBSD.org> <506DEB4C.5020508@andric.com> <86haq9hq2c.fsf@ds4.des.no> <20121005033244.GL35915@deviant.kiev.zoral.com.ua> <86y5jll7kc.fsf@ds4.des.no>
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On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 12:08 AM, Dag-Erling Sm=F8rgrav <des@des.no> wrote:
> Konstantin Belousov <kostikbel@gmail.com> writes:
>> Dag-Erling Sm=F8rgrav <des@des.no> writes:
>> > Dimitry Andric <dimitry@andric.com> writes:
>> > > Well, do we still officially support any real i386 machines?
>> > No, 486 and up only. Personally, I think we should ship 586
>> > binaries (pentium-mmx) by default.
>> There is absolutely no architectural difference between usermode ISA
>> between i386 and pentiums, ignoring SMP-support instructions, which
>> are usually not emited by the compiler anyway.
>
> By "binaries" I mean ISOs and freebsd-update, including the kernel.
>
> (actually, it's the kernel I care the most about)
>
>> Really interesting stuff started appearing with pentium pro, like CMOV
>> instructions. Even more important, -march=3Dpentiumpro generates much
>> better -fPIC code (probably could be activated by -mcpu=3Dpentiumpro).
>
> Which is why most Linux distributions target 686, but we can't if we
> want to support small systems like the AMD Geode-based soekris net4xxx
> and net5xxx out of the box.
I would target the appropriate architecture (amd64) where it
matters (amd64), and target the lowest sane common denominator on
i386. In reality, what does a couple MB mean on amd64 vs i386?
Thanks,
-Garrett
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