Dave Jones wrote:
<snip>
> C. If it doesn't hurt and it would probably help, I don't see what's the > matter with making an Athlon-optimized kernel.
A number of reasons. - It's one more column in the matrix of supported kernels to worry about. This may seem insignificant, but it takes quite a while to push a kernel package through the buildsystem given how many variants it spits out. On a busy day (like for eg, just before release), it can take the better part of a day to get packages built. - The gain just isn't worth it over the 2.4 kernels. Now that the runtime optimisations get performed in 2.6, theres only one thing thats missing that would be in an Athlon optimised kernel, and thats the optimised copy_page/clear_page, which are really only a win when a lot of data is being copied back/forth between the kernel, and even then, only under certain usage patterns. I'll be surprised if this shows up on any real-world application.
<snip>
Apparently the man who started this thread found his real-world applications.
---- Peace, William
