Re: Re-evaluating architecture inclusion in unstable/experimental
On Sat, Sep 29, 2018 at 05:11:31PM +0200, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> On 9/29/18 12:02 PM, Adam Borowski wrote:
> > With primary use cases being hosting of multiple containers, and/or running
> > a large number-crunching cluster. Sacrificing lots of human hassle for a 7%
> > speed boost makes you a "Gentoo ricer"[1] on a desktop/laptop, but could be
> > a nice thing on a $1M cluster.
>
> It can be up to 50% which is why Intel's own C/C++ compiler actually provides
> an option to automatically generate x86_64 code with 32-bit pointers:
>
> https://software.intel.com/en-us/node/523141
Yeah, but that 7% figure I noted is an already very optimistic number for a
typical task. A good part of programs (like shell scripts) show 0%, and
there are some that are actually slower (impossible in theory, but there are
missed optimizations which work on mainstream ABIs).
So an user would have to evaluate every single use case to see whether it's
worth the effort. In the only case I know where such an evaluation was
meant for a real cluster, the guy who asked me decided that "no".
> > Thus: I propose to drop x32, and reallocate your tuits to other archs.
>
> Thanks, but x32 doesn't really use any resources and as long as the stuff
> works, I don't see a reason to keep people from using it. If Linux upstream
> decides to ax it, we will ax it here as well. Until then, it allows doing
> some extra CI for package builds and edge cases.
Right -- as I haven't done any x32 fixes recently, it's not up to me to
decide. I'm just voicing me having been an active porter in the past but
then getting disheartened by the lack of use.
You might also want to take the domain debian-x32.org from me. Not sure how
useful jessie era packages (including d-i which never got upstreamed) will
be after buster...
On the other hand, x32 is not a shut case, hardware that can run it being
ubiquitous. Archs like sh4 whose entire reason to exist ("a fully free
architecture") got eaten by riscv and that have no meaningful presence in
the wild, on the other hand...
Meow!
--
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
⣾⠁⢰⠒⠀⣿⡁ 10 people enter a bar: 1 who understands binary,
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ 1 who doesn't, D who prefer to write it as hex,
⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ and 1 who narrowly avoided an off-by-one error.
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