"Debian architecture" for P-III?

[Jonathan Melhuish <lists@netacclaim.co.uk>]

Googling turns up lots of arguments about whether or not it's worth 
creating seperate optimized binaries for 686-class machines, and I have 
to admit I'm not particularly fussed that they don't exist.

However, I'm being forced to compile my own kernel so I thought I might 
as well compile it in an optimized fashion.  "dpkg-architecture" seems 
to be what I'm looking for, but neither the "known debian architectures" 
or "system types" contain anything later than i386.

Was I being naïve in thinking it would be that easy?

Cheers,

Jon