Re: [Qemu-devel] 0.9.0 and svn don't build with -march=pentium2 etc.; was: Latest SVN fails to build on Fedora Core 6 (same with 0.9.0)

[Thomas Orgis <thomas-forum@orgis.org>]

Am Wed, 28 Mar 2007 15:56:59 -0400
schrieb Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>: 

> On Saturday 24 March 2007 8:32 am, Sunil Amitkumar Janki wrote:
> > Anyhow, I expect 32-bit hardware to gradually die because of wear and 
> > tear in the next few years and the replacement will be 64-bit hardware so
> > the problem will solve itself that way.
> 
> Specifically, in 2008 32-bit x86 hardware both drops below 50% of the 
> installed base and stops being a commercial viable option for new sales in 
> the desktop or laptop space.

Sure, 32bit is vanishing from new hardware sales.
But I got my first machine that is able to decentnly run qemu just half a year ago:
A used ThinkPad. I didn't buy a new computer system since my very first system
in 1995 (which had to return to shop because they put a broken video card in...
grmbl).
So for me, 32 bits are the state-of-the art, apart from my two machines at work,
which are Compaq XP1000's being 64 bit all-over, but as astonishing an
EV67@667Mhz still can be at crunching floating point numbers, it's not a host
for qemu VMs (esp. since it cannot use kqemu to accelerate x86 code ... hm,
would qemu/kqemu work to run Tru64 accelerated in a vm on alpha?;-).

And... I don't expect the 32bit hardware to die because of "wear and tear",
especially when thinking of the i486DX4 that handles my DSL NAT routing needs,
or about the Pentium 100 serving as music jukebox;-)
Not to forget a i386DX40 that still just works fine when I decide to power it up.

Well, I don't intend to run qemu on these old systems, and I only do it casually
on my ThinkPad to test some software under a different OS.
Sure, if becoming a qemu power user with several VMs doing work and
compiling stuff, I'd think about becoming a dual/quad AMD64 user.

On that edge, though, qemu should find a way to arrange with current
gcc versions... gcc3.4 won't hold forever.


Thomas.