Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Fri, 6 Apr 2007 15:47:59 -0500
From:      "Nikolas Britton" <nikolas.britton@gmail.com>
To:        "Ed Schouten" <ed@fxq.nl>
Cc:        FreeBSD Current <freebsd-current@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Do we need this junk?
Message-ID:  <ef10de9a0704061347q7f98a47aj634faa3e34d923e2@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20070406201749.GF6950@hoeg.nl>
References:  <ef10de9a0704050258l4ea754b3n99a1239a81b844a0@mail.gmail.com> <20070405103708.GC842@turion.vk2pj.dyndns.org> <ef10de9a0704050839g7b873dabw5a5e211140781781@mail.gmail.com> <20070405.140109.39240822.imp@bsdimp.com> <ef10de9a0704060715s6b5957daq2fe8a465362e3446@mail.gmail.com> <20070406142326.GC6950@hoeg.nl> <ef10de9a0704060731l71186e1duea689617af407f4b@mail.gmail.com> <20070406153500.GE6950@hoeg.nl> <ef10de9a0704061243o6c7d3118neb702b7c925db97a@mail.gmail.com> <20070406201749.GF6950@hoeg.nl>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On 4/6/07, Ed Schouten <ed@fxq.nl> wrote:
> * Nikolas Britton <nikolas.britton@gmail.com> wrote:
> > The legacy bits don't upset me, what upsets me is sacrificing
> > performance so we can  support a minority of legacy systems. IIRC? we
> > could recode the Kernel for SSE2 math if the processor was guaranteed
> > to have that SSE2. SSE2 adds 214 new instructions to the existing x86
> > instruction set.
>
> But SSE2 isn't even used in kernel space, not even on AMD64. As far as I
> can see, the only exception I can see is pagezero. Just take a look at
> src/sys/conf/kern.mk. If it's not even possible to use SSE2 in
> kernelspace on amd64, why would it be possible to do so on i386?
>

Doesn't Apple use SSE2/3 in the kernel? IIRC Mac OS X (Darwin) running
on a white box PC won't even boot if it's missing.



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?ef10de9a0704061347q7f98a47aj634faa3e34d923e2>