On Mon, Apr 03, 2000 at 07:29:34PM -0400, Christopher W. Curtis wrote: > Eray Ozkural wrote: > > > > Josip Rodin wrote: > > > No arch/cpu-related optimizations are being set by default in most of the > > > packages. Perhaps there are a few exceptions, where the upstream settings > > > use optimization, or where the Debian maintainer has changed it, I don't > > > know. > > > > I see. I'd like to stress that my original claim about 50% is perfectly > > valid, and I think that's sufficiently large to demand some action. > > It by no means implies that people with true i386's won't be able to > > run Debian, it just gives a turbo option to people with pentiums. > > I don't think that is true (anymore?) Some compilation options can > (should) take advantage of features (instructions) that the newer CPUs > support that the older ones don't. NT, for instance, will not run on a > 386 chip. Not [simply] because it's far too slow, but because it uses > the XCHG (I think) instruction, which the 386 does not have. There are > distinct benefits to compiling for a newer chip than a base-model. I > personally would like to have a dist specific to my Athlon if there are > GCC optimizations for its pipeline and cache. > > Now, the biggest complaint is obviously resource constraints. Maybe > it's just not practical for every package to be compiled for a 386 and > for an Intel Pentium and an AMD Athlon and an Intel Pentium-III, etc. I > wonder if package pools (are these being adopted for sure?) would help. > >From my understanding, there will be many versions of packages saved, > not just stable and latest, and Packages.gz is updated to reflect links > to working versions. If so, could this be further amended to include > optimizations? > > Ie: > > i386/Packages.gz -> i386/i386/Packages.gz > i386/i386/Packages.gz <- lowest common denominator > i386/i486/Packages.gz <- i486 optimized packages, with i386 packages > substituted for packages without i486 opts > i386/k6/Packages.gz <- same as i486, for AMD K6[-[2|3]] chips > ...etc. > > ? > > This would be nice if possible (I assume that there is some sort of > automatic generation of Packages.gz with a package pool implementation) > assuming that the condition where 'xyz-1.1 exists in i486 and xyz-1.1.1 > exists in i386 but not i486' can be resolved. > > I'm not a developer and am not familiar with the process; if packages > are automatically compiled from source on each architecture after being > submitted to incoming then this isn't really an issue, but seeing that > the alpha often lags behind i386 in package versions it doesn't seem > that this happens. But in light of this, I'll just read what others say > - I just would like to add that I think it's good to optimize for later > chips if possible ... > > regards, > Christopher Well, it sounds like what we need is some group independant from debian, that is willing to take the pototo source CD's once they are released, and compile a new version optomized for specific architectures. Maybee have it instead be a seperate CD that you can just apt-get upgrade to, and it will upgrade you to all the optomized packages. I dunno, i'm just rambling i guess :) Erik Bernhardson journey@jps.net -- It is better to remain silent and be considered a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt. -- Mark Twain
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