On Wed, 29 Dec 1999, Brian Ivey wrote:
> Could someone please explain why a 686 distribution is needed? How it would
> be different from the normal RedHat distribution?
It would run somewhat faster on PPro/Pentium III/Pentium III and probably
K7 and Cyrix 6x86Mx, but wouldn't run at all on
386/486/Pentium/K5/K6/6x86.
The idea is to just recompile everything, and telling the compiler it may
generate instrictions specific to 686 processors, and to optimize
alignments etc for the newer processor cores.
Red Hat currently does not build a 686 version because
- we want to remain compatible with older machines (writing this from
a K6 (non-686), using a 486SX mail server to relay it)
- the compiler currently included in Red Hat Linux, egcs 1.1.2, can't
handle 686 optimizations well; the performance gain would be rather
small. (Actually some packages compiled with egcs and i686 optimizations
are actually SLOWER than non-optimized packages). It simply isn't worth
the additional work/maintenance.
gcc 2.95.2, the current version of the compiler, is quite a bit better
at optimizations, though.
LLaP
bero
--
Nobody will ever need more than 640 kB RAM.
-- Bill Gates, 1983
Windows 98 requires 16 MB RAM.
-- Bill Gates, 1999
Nobody will ever need Windows 98.
-- logical conclusion
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