[OpenAFS-devel] Linux Kernel Module build question

[Elliot Lee]

On 12 Jul 2001, Derek Atkins wrote:

> Eh.  I don't consider i386/586/686/athlon to be different
> architectures.  The fact that Red Hat does is, IMHO, a bug.  Just
> compile for 386 and be done with it.  The speed gain is negligible,
> and if someone cares they can recompile for themselves.

. There are real gains (such as big page sizes, MMX RAID csums) available
only on > i386.

. I'm not sure how big the gains are, although I know that gcc >= 2.96
produces impressive speedups due to the rewritten x86 backend. The impact
of even modest speedups in the kernel is noticeable due to the fact that
every single app ever written has to go through it.

. SMP requires i586 minimum.

. The enterprise kernel to get bigmem etc. has to be built for i686.

So, you are pretty much stuck with at least four kernel variants (i386,
i586, i586-SMP, i686-SMP-enterprise) to meet users' requirements, and if
you have to support those variants, it's really not much pain to support
athlon & i686 as well.

So, to quote a well known hacker, "you're on crack" ;-)
-- Elliot
Your freedom to change my source code does not translate into my
responsibility to foist your changes upon users at large.