Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 08:17:31 -0700 From: Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov> To: Bram Stolk <bram@nuson.nl> Cc: freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Significant speedups from -mcpu=ev56 Message-ID: <199906231517.IAA22409@lestat.nas.nasa.gov>
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On Wed, 23 Jun 1999 11:21:23 +0200
Bram Stolk <bram@nuson.nl> wrote:
> Will code compiled with -mcpu=ev56 still run on ancient alphas?
> Or will there be made use of instructions that are only available
> on the ev56 machines?
It will, no doubt, use BWX instructions.
However, it's worth noting that programs which use BWX can expect the
operating system to trap and emulate those instructions in the event
they don't exist on the CPU the program is running on. This is described
in an Alpha ABI document, but I don't recall exactly which one.
NetBSD/alpha supports all of this, of course.
-- Jason R. Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>
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