Re: [PATCH] 2.6 workaround for Athlon/Opteron prefetch errata

Bill Davidsen
2003-09-15T11:58:04Z

On Mon, 15 Sep 2003, John Bradford wrote:

[... many good points ...]

> This makes it trivial to:
>
> * Make a kernel for a distribution's initial install
> Select all CPUs as supported, and optimise for 686.
>
> * Make an optimised kernel for any system
> Select only the target CPU as supported, and optimise for it
>
> * Make a generic kernel for PIV, and Athlon
> Select PIV and Athlon only as supported. Optimise for either, or
> optimise for 386, (yes, even though it is not supported), for a
> small kernel, on the basis that it will maximise cache usage, and be
> fairly optimal on both systems.

That last is a good point for sure, I have seen several posts indicating
that -Os is faster on small cache machines like old Celerons, it would be
a sensible choice for a distro, and make the kernel smaller as well.
Kernels are getting near the limits of some machines to boot them.

--
bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
CTO, TMR Associates, Inc
Doing interesting things with little computers since 1979.