On Sun, 2011-11-20 at 16:30 +0100, Kai Wasserbäch wrote:
> Dear Raphaël,
> Raphaël Hertzog schrieb am 20.11.2011 08:40:
> > On Sat, 19 Nov 2011, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> >> Also possibly:
> >> 6. DM&P/SiS Vortex86 and Vortex86SX. These supposedly have all
> >> 586-class features except an FPU, and we could probably keep FPU
> >> emulation for them.
> >
> > FWIW, I do run Debian on such systems albeit with a custom kernel.
> > Given those CPU tend to be used in an "embedded" context I guess
> > it's ok if the official kernel does not support them. But it would be
> > nice if Debian's userspace could be kept compatible. Not sure what this
> > requires though...
>
> judging from the section you quoted from Ben's e-mail, I'd say you shouldn't be
> affected in the short term if the FPU is really the only thing missing to make
> it a full 586-class CPU (of course, a further increase to a higher instruction
> set class would hit you).
> Apart from that I wonder how many "embedded" x86 CPUs (instruction set < 586)
> are out there. Are they still sold in current products?
As I said, Soekris still seems to have some for sale, but they are just
using up their remaining stock of CPUs.
> If so it might(!) be
> worth to keep compatible with them, even if that would mean an additional kernel
> build*.
No, there will be no additional kernel flavours. The kernel team is
generally aiming to cover all supported systems with as few different
configurations as possible. Every extra flavour takes substantial space
in the archive and time on autobuilders.
> On the other hand most embedded kernels are custom build anyway, in
> which case "offering the tools" to build a running Debian system should be
> enough, right?
>
> * The question here is (again): do we have some numbers on this, that could
> guide the decision? If not and the assumption by the kernel maintainers is "few
> systems still operational run with CPUs which don't at least support 586
> instructions", then I'd find it reasonable to still disable the support in the
> kernel. In case a huge amount of systems is still running with such CPUs chances
> are good, we're hearing of them then. ;-)
I'm confident there aren't a huge number of systems, but it's really
impossible to tell just how many or few there are.
Ben.
--
Ben Hutchings
Usenet is essentially a HUGE group of people passing notes in class.
- Rachel Kadel, `A Quick Guide to Newsgroup Etiquette'
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