Re: i386 compatibility & libstdc++
On Fri, Apr 25, 2003 at 01:37:04PM +0200, Emile van Bergen wrote:
> I say this because the original pentium didn't introduce a lot of new
> features other than the two pipelines for which you only need some insn
> scheduling that's fully compatible with the 486, and IIRC wasn't sold
> nearly as well as the various flavours of the 486.
>
> In other words, if you use 486-compatible instructions and pentium
> scheduling, you're already taking almost full advantage of the pentium.
> It makes therefore little sense to group the original pentium with the
> later architectures.
The problem with this is the binary compatibility with other distributions,
and the availability (or more likely, not) of third party binary-only
software built against 386 versions of libs. Breaking at 686+ would
mean that people with reasonably capable Pentium/MMX machines (say a
P200MMX) would likely be unable to use such software.
Cheers,
Nick
--
Nick Phillips -- nwp@lemon-computing.com
You feel a whole lot more like you do now than you did when you used to.
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