Do we need this junk?

Thu Apr 5 18:12:30 UTC 2007

Nikolas Britton schrieb:
> On 4/5/07, Peter Jeremy <peterjeremy at optushome.com.au> wrote:
>> [-stable removed since it's not relevant there]
>>
>> On 2007-Apr-05 04:58:17 -0500, Nikolas Britton 
>> <nikolas.britton at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >Can anything in the list below be removed from CURRENT?
>> >
>> >legacyfree1# cd dev/
>> >legacyfree1# grep -irsn isa ./ | grep -i include
>> ...
>> >legacyfree1# grep -irsn mca ./ | grep -i include
>> ...
>>
>> Why do you believe anything in the list might need to be removed?
>>
>
> I'd like to also add that 6-STABLE should be the last branch to support:
> 1. ISA / EISA
> 2. PC98 Platform.
> 3. i486
> 4. i586
>
> 98.83% of us have at least a i686 and 62.6% of us have at least a i786
> (SSE2) processor.
>
> Arch Break Down
> i386             5586     94.02%
> amd64             305       5.13%
> sparc64           30       0.50%
>
> x86 Break Down:
> i486    30           0.074%
> ???     51           0.125%
> i586    404         0.995%
> i686    14724     36.230%
> i786    25431     62.576%
> -----------------------------------
> Tot:    40640    100% 

Where to varients figure in, such as Celerons, or non-Intel processor 
manufacturers
such as VIA Tech. I had a problem a while ago on bringing up a VIA Tech 
processor with NetBSD
because the generic compiler emitted some illegal opcodes for that 
processor, but when one
dropped back to say a i486 level, the compiler didn't emit such, and 
'all was well'...

After a system has been installed, then go for the specific target 
processor. But for the 'boot on anything'
the lowest common architecture should be the base. (I've had some AMD 
K6's in my house networking
environment for almost 7-8 years... but for routers, dhcp, firewall 
service there's no point in putting
a 'latest and greatest' in.

In my 'embedded' world, there is also a tendency to use older 
architectures, albeit with low power, or a
number of integrated peripherals, etc. that, like the VIA cpu that don't 
quite fit into the later architectures.

John Clark.