Re: Increasing minimum 'i386' processor

[Goswin von Brederlow <goswin-v-b@web.de>]

Matthias Klose <doko@debian.org> writes:

> On 11/19/2011 11:42 PM, Ben Hutchings wrote:
>> The i386 architecture was the first in Linux and in Debian, but we have
>> long since dropped support for the original i386-compatible processors
>> and now require a minimum of a 486-class processor.
>> 
>> I think it is time to increase the minimum requirement to 586-class, if
>> not for wheezy then immediately after.
>
> note that squeeze is built this way, and single packages like openjdk only build
> for 586.
>
>> (Later it should be increased
>> further, and eventually i386 should be reduced to a partial architecture
>> that may be installed on amd64 systems.)  This would allow the use of
>> optimisations and new instructions throughout userland that improve
>> performance for the vast majority of users.
>
> could you give numbers what kind of improvements you would expect?  The biggest
> burden for i386 is the register pressure, which you won't fix with targeting a
> newer processor.  The better approach would be a new port, the x32 architecture;
> I don't know if anybody did look into building a distribution for this
> architecture yet.  The next thing could be to default to sse2 math instead of
> x87 (didn't look if this is already the default for x32).
>
>   Matthias

Where the relevant patches added to binutils and gcc for this?

MfG
        Goswin